‘They Went to JAIL!’ Joe Scarborough Likens Clarence and Ginni Thomas Grift to Past Congressional Scandal
Joe Scarborough didn’t quite equate past congressional grift scandals to recent reports of Justice Clarence Thomas and his superwealthy benefactor Harlan Crow, but he came close.
At issue is a new Washington Post report that details $80,000 in consulting fees paid to Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, by conservative legal activist Leonard Leo who used Kellyanne Conway’s polling company to funnel the money to the wife of the Supreme Court Justice, according to documents review by the reporters.
The Post reported that Leo instructed Conway, a pollster who later became an adviser to former President Donald Trump and now a Fox News contributor, to pay Ginni Thomas but added, “No mention of Ginni.” This comes a day after it was revealed that Crow paid for the private school tuition of Thomas’s grand nephew and previous reporting of numerous luxury vacations Thomas enjoyed at the generosity of his friend.
“We’re going to hear B.S. from the usual defenders of Clarence Thomas,” Scarborough said before adding his preemptive mimicry. “‘Oh, they’re just picking on him because he’s a conservative and they hate black conservatives, this challenge is the…you know blah, blah, blah,’ all of this other nonsense.”
“If we’re reporting on a story this morning that Chuck Schumer’s wife got paid, you know, tens of thousands of dollars and that there had been a direction from the biggest lobbyists in the Democratic Party to keep the payments quiet?” Scarborough continued. “We’d be saying the same thing here today. And that is pure rank nonsense.”
“The Wall Street Journal editorial page, National Review, all these other people have been spewing about, saying ‘Oh, they’re just picking on Clarance.’ No. This is obvious. This is obvious as Clarence Thomas going through everything that he and his wife are going through in the middle of January 6th and not stepping aside on a case where he became the lone dissenter when he had a real interest in that case itself. It just keeps piling up.”
“By the way, I knew guys I served with in Congress who got a golf trip to Ireland, paid for by Jack Abramoff, and went to jail,” Scarborough concluded. “Bob Ney went to jail for that. There were several others who went to jail. And these guys are whining about how they’re victims. They’re on the Supreme Court of the United States of America, nine of the most powerful people in the world. They just apparently don’t think that the rules that apply to members of Congress apply to them.”
Former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney was sentenced to 30 months of incarceration for his role in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal. The Justice Department had asked for 27 months in prison for the Ohio Republican.
Watch above via MSNBC.
