Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo urged that there be “no mention of Ginni” Thomas in an arranged payment to the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.
Leo told Kellyanne Conway, a GOP pollster who would later serve as an aide to former President Trump, to “give” Virginia Thomas “another $25K” in January 2012 but emphasized that there be “no mention of Ginni, of course” in the paperwork, according to documents viewed by the Post.
That day, Conway’s Polling Company sent the nonprofit, then known as the Judicial Education Project, a bill for $25,000 for “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting.”
Later that year, the Judicial Education Project submitted an amicus brief in a case before the Supreme Court that would ultimately overturn portions of the Voting Rights Act.
In total, Conway’s Polling Company paid Thomas’s Liberty Consulting firm $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, the Post reported. It was expected to pay another $20,000 by the end of 2012.
More coverage of the Clarence Thomas ethics scandal from The Hill:
- Lawmakers react to Thomas’s growing list of problems
- Thomas biographer calls reporting on Crow ties ‘despicable’
- Crow covered boarding school tuition for Thomas relative justice raised ‘as a son’
- Roberts struggles to keep Supreme Court out of ethics fight
- Durbin slams Supreme Court’s response to ethics issues as ‘oblivious’
Leo said in a statement to the Post that Thomas’s work in this case “did not involve anything” related to the Supreme Court’s business.
“It is no secret that Ginni Thomas has a long history of working on issues within the conservative movement, and part of that work has involved gauging public attitudes and sentiment,” Leo said. “The work she did here did not involve anything connected with either the Court’s business or with other legal issues.”
“Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni,” he added of his effort to keep the name of the Supreme Court justice’s wife off paperwork.
Justice Thomas has recently come under intense scrutiny following several reports by ProPublica about his relationship with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow. A new report Thursday showed that Crow had paid thousands of dollars in tuition to private boarding schools for Thomas’s great-nephew.