10 Apr Harlan Crow Sleeps with the Fishes
Many of you, we’d guess, know who Harlan Crow is. Most of you, however, probably don’t. For this latter group, Crow is a billionaire real estate developer from Dallas. He is also a prolific Republican donor, a supporter of moderate conservatives (politicians like George W. Bush and Liz Cheney, and writers like Jonah Goldberg and David French), a philanthropist, a collector of art and other memorabilia, and a close friend of Clarence and Ginni Thomas. It’s in these last two capacities that Crow currently finds himself at the center of a raging political controversy.
You see, last week, a media operation called Pro Publica published a long expose on Crow, his wife Kathy, and their friendship with the Thomases. The Crows are wealthy. They like to travel. They especially like to travel with their friends. And sometimes, that travel includes flying on their private jet and staying at Crow-owned properties (Harlan’s father, Trammell, founded Wyndham Hotels, among other companies).
According to Pro Publica, this is outrageous. Traveling with their friends constitutes “gifts,” to the Thomases, which, in turn, are the heart of a scheme to destroy the rule of law. After all, if Ginni and Clarence go on vacation with Kathy and Harlan, then we’re only one step removed from political prosecutions of partisan enemies…or…well…something.
In fairness, it might be worth our while to analyze how these alleged “gifts” the Thomases received from the Crows compare to similar “gifts” that the other justices, current and former, have received from their wealthy friends. We can’t do that, however. No one – not even the vaunted Pro Publica – has bothered to look at any other Justice’s relationship with any of their friends. Ever. This is something they did exclusively for Ginni and Clarence Thomas. That’s weird, right? It’s almost like the Thomases have been targeted by the media or something. But why would that be?
Anyway, the Wall Street Journal had this to say about “The Smearing of Clarence Thomas”:
The left’s assault on the Supreme Court is continuing, and the latest front is the news that Justice Clarence Thomas has a rich friend who has hosted the Justice on his private plane, his yacht, and his vacation resort. That’s it. That’s the story. Yet this non-bombshell has triggered breathless claims that the Court must be investigated, and that Justice Thomas must resign or be impeached. Those demands give away the real political game here….
The piece is loaded with words and phrases intended to convey that this is all somehow disreputable: “superyacht”; “luxury trips”; “exclusive California all-male retreat”; “sprawling ranch”; “private chefs”; “elegant accommodation”; “opulent lodge”; “lavishing the justice with gifts.” And more.
Adjectival overkill is the method of bad polemicists who don’t have much to report. The ProPublica writers suggest that Justice Thomas may have violated ethics rules, and they quote a couple of cherry-picked ethicists to express their dismay.
But it seems clear that the Court’s rules at the time all of this happened did not require that gifts of personal hospitality be disclosed. This includes the private plane trips. ProPublica fails to make clear to readers that the U.S. Judicial Conference recently changed its rules to require more disclosure. The new rules took effect last month.
We have two quibbles with the Journal here. The first is the headline on the editorial. We know this is pedantic, but this is not “the smearing of Clarence Thomas.” It is, rather, the latest smearing of Clarence Thomas. Thomas has been smeared countless times before for countless unfounded reasons. Indeed, as every schoolboy knows, his tenure as a Supreme Court Justice began with “the smearing of Clarence Thomas.” The Left HATES Thomas. They despise his views, and they especially despise that he holds those views proudly and unapologetically as a black man. They’ve smeared before and they’ll smear again. Even long after he’s gone, they’ll smear him and smear him and smear him.
Our second quibble is with the Journal’s suggestion that “This ethics talk is really about setting up an apparatus that politicians can then use against the Justices if there is any transgression, however minor or inadvertent.” We don’t doubt that this is true, and we don’t doubt, as the Journal also notes, that “the left is furious it lost control of the Court, and it wants it back by whatever means possible.” Nevertheless, we think they’re missing the bigger point here.
We think that this “investigation” is as much about Harlan Crow as it is about Clarence Thomas, which is to say that we think that this is about much more than simply delegitimizing the Court. Moreover – and this may sound a little nutty, but bear with us – this isn’t even entirely about Thomas and Crow.
The very day after the Thomas-Crow story appeared in Pro Publica, The Washingtonian ran the following bit about Crow, his home, his library, and the artifacts he has collected:
When Republican megadonor Harlan Crow isn’t lavishing Justice Clarence Thomas with free trips on his private plane and yacht (in possible violation of Supreme Court ethics rules), he lives a quiet life in Dallas among his historical collections. These collections include Hitler artifacts—two of his paintings of European cityscapes, a signed copy of Mein Kampf, and assorted Nazi memorabilia—plus a garden full of statues of the 20th century’s worst despots.
Crow, the billionaire heir to a real estate fortune, has said that he’s filled his property with these mementos because he hates communism and fascism. Nonetheless, his collections caused an uproar back in 2015 when Marco Rubio attended a fundraiser at Crow’s house on the eve of Yom Kippur. Rubio’s critics thought the timing was inappropriate given, you know, the Hitler stuff. …
In 2014, when Crow’s house was included in a public tour of historic homes, a reporter from the Dallas Morning News visited. Apparently, Crow was visibly uncomfortable with questions about his dictator statues and Hitler memorabilia, preferring to discuss his other historical collections: documents signed by the likes of Christopher Columbus and George Washington; paintings by Renoir and Monet; statues of two of Crow’s heroes, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
But despite Crow’s discomfort, the reporter did manage to see the garden of dictator statues, describing it as a “historical nod to the facts of man’s inhumanity to man.” Among the figures in the “Garden of Evil” are Lenin and Stalin, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito.
As The Washingtonian notes – in between smug swipes at Crow – this is something that Crow has never hidden, for which he has a reasonable explanation, and which covers the gamut of evil, in the spirit of “never forget.” Nevertheless, these “revelations” (which The Washingtonian also notes have been “revealed” countless times before) have made it eminently justifiable for every media and social media personality to decry Harlan Crow as a sick, twisted, Nazi sympathizer. The whole thing is shockingly vile, petty, and utterly intentional.
In this whole kerfuffle, we see two of our broad themes from the last several years highlighted brilliantly. For starters, this is simply another signpost on the road to the Total State. What Pro Publica, The Washingtonian, and their media allies have done here is to politicize and weaponize friendship. It is no longer your private business with whom you choose to be friends. It is the public’s business. And if you choose to be friends with the wrong people, then you are an enemy. And enemies, as we all know, must be attacked and, if possible, destroyed.
Of course, Harlan Crow is not likely to be easily destroyed. He’s 74 and a billionaire. They can try, and they pick at him a little here and a little there, but he’s not likely to feel it much or care.
But then, that’s not really the point. Twenty-some years ago, when the Clinton Justice Department took up an antitrust case against Microsoft, we argued that Bill Gates wasn’t really the target of the action, that he was “the man in the cement shoes,” i.e. the guy who gets tossed in the river to make a point to everyone else that they’d better fall in line. A more apt analogy might have been Luca Brasi, the Corleone family enforcer who ended up “sleeping with the fishes” and whose bullet-proof vest was sent, wrapped around a fish to Sonny Corleone “to send him a message.”
Whether he’s Luca Brasi or the man in the cement shoes, the smearing of Harlan Crow is meant to send a message: DON’T BE FRIENDS WITH CONSERVATIVES! OR ELSE! They don’t mean simply to politicize the friendship between Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas but to politicize friendship more broadly.
This whole episode is as sad and pathetic as it was predictable. This is where we are headed. And to be clear, this is NOT the purview of the Left alone. The Right is on the same path. We are only more keenly aware of it coming from the Left because its tactics are incredibly advanced, and its impacts are those we witness more acutely.
We’re not sure how we break this cycle, but we are sure that we’d better give it some serious thought.
