This is Part 3 of a Pulitzer-winning ongoing series exploring the financial scandal surrounding the Supreme Court. For the other parts, or to discuss the series as a whole, click here.

Crow paid for private school for a relative Thomas said he was raising “as a son.” “This is way outside the norm,” said a former White House ethics lawyer.

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

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  • @[email protected]
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    36 months ago

    The sad reality is democrats need to remember that the presidency holds the keys to our judicial system and thus our rights. The GOP figured that out first and have a decades-long headstart.

    • @[email protected]
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      6 months ago

      Biden never uses his bully pulpit to draw attention to any of these things, even though that’s the best way to have everyone be aware of the corruption.

    • @1800doctorb
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      26 months ago

      Agreed, but living through the 2016 years, I did see how a groundswell of public opinion can sway the priorities of congress. It just takes a lot of people pushing.

      The president absolutely should be beating the drum on these things. But I guess I’m focused on the levers that we as citizens can pull to avoid that feeling of powerlessness.