Conservative activist specified Ginni Thomas’s name be left off payment notes: Report
Jack Birle
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A conservative judicial activist reportedly specified that the name of the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas be left off billing paperwork for consulting services.
Leonard Leo instructed Kellyanne Conway to bill one of the nonprofit groups he advised for and pay Ginni Thomas for her consulting services in January 2012, but he explicitly said not to mention Ginni Thomas’s name, per the Washington Post.
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The documents obtained by the Washington Post reportedly made clear that the billing paperwork should have “no mention of Ginni, of course.” The $25,000 sent to Conway’s Polling Company was listed as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting.”
The report said it was unclear what work Ginni Thomas did for Leo’s nonprofit group or Conway’s polling firm based on the documents acquired.
Leo defended Ginni Thomas by saying the work she did for him “did not involve anything connected with either the court’s business or with other legal issues” and added that he has “always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni” in a statement to the Washington Post.
The report comes as the high court is under scrutiny for its ethics and reporting standards, with some Democratic senators calling for Clarence Thomas to be investigated.
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A report from ProPublica suggested that GOP donor Harlan Crow bankrolled the private school tuition of Clarence Thomas’s grandnephew, who was being raised by the justice “as a son.”
A separate report from the Daily Wire said Justice Sonia Sotomayer had not recused herself from several copyright cases related to Penguin Random House despite receiving more than $3 million for her books with the publisher.