Well, it seems the crosshairs could be aimed at Justice Clarence Thomas once again, as a woman has come forward to say that he was groped by the sitting Supreme Court justice. Moira Smith alleges an incident at a dinner party in 1999, where Thomas inappropriately touched her at a Truman Foundation Scholar dinner party. Again, there’s very little to go on here, with the former head of the Truman Foundation noting that she had never heard of such an incident, adding that it would be unusual for Justice Thomas to be alone with a guest. Yet another game of he said, she said (via the Hill):
A woman is claiming that Justice Clarence Thomas groped her when she was a young scholar in 1999, an allegation the justice denies.Moira Smith claims Thomas squeezed her on the buttocks several times at a dinner party when she was a Truman Foundation Scholar, according to the National Law Journal, which first reported the allegations.
In a statement through a Supreme Court spokeswoman, Thomas denied Smith's allegations.
“This claim is preposterous and it never happened,” the spokeswoman said.
National Law Journal spoke to three of Smith's former roommates during the spring and summer of 1999 in an attempt to corroborate her allegations. Each said they remembered Smith describing the inappropriate interaction with Thomas. Two of Smith's roommates also told The Associated Press they remembered being told about the incident.
The journal also spoke to three other people who attended the same dinner, including Louis Blair, the former head of the Truman Foundation, who had no knowledge of the alleged incident. Blair questioned whether Thomas ever would have been alone with a dinner guest.
Again, these friends were told, but the Blair said that she has no idea what Smith is talking about. Let’s entertain this for a second: if this did happen, why come forward now? I can see why some women have come forward with their allegations about Trump since the Republican nominee said he was never sexually inappropriate with women during the second presidential debate. He’s gone on to attack his accusers’ physical appearance in some cases, which I guess could prompt some of these alleged accusers to come forward. I would say that if you really want to make an accusation carry more weight with people, don’t call Gloria Allred.
What has Thomas done to earn such a heinous accusation? The fact that Thomas is the alleged groper certainly rehashes his 1990 Supreme Court nomination, where Anita Hill alleged that the now-sitting jurist made sexually graphic remarks in her presence. We don’t know if these allegations are true. We’ll see how these pan out, but the timing is fishy. The target has always been one for the Left, who can’t stand how a poor black man from Georgia can become one of the bulwarks of conservative judicial thought, a sitting jurist, and one of the country’s leading legal minds. Thomas can be all of those things, but he has to be a liberal, according to the progressive left’s ethos. If he isn’t, he’s slammed as an uncle tom—and he’s had that slur thrown at him many times. When Justice Antonin Scalia passed away this year, liberals were hoping that Thomas would drop dead next. This level of abuse isn’t anything new to Thomas or conservatives in general.
Let’s see how these allegations play out, but my guess is this thing will fizzle. It’s simply too political, there’s no real evidence, whereas there’s recordings of Trump, and conservatives will circle the wagons around Thomas making any attempt to know the truth about these allegations, which could be total lies, come to fruition.
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