A federal appeals court judge previously on short lists for the Supreme Court is taking the rare step to broadly and publicly reject allegations that Justice Clarence Thomas has been improperly influenced by lavish gifts provided by a conservative billionaire, dismissing “pot shots” at the Supreme Court in general.
“Judges are just like every other human being. We have a diverse group of friends, and those friends don’t influence the way we do our job,” Judge Amul Thapar, who sits on a Cincinnati-based appeals court, told CNN in an interview.
Thapar this past week released a new book about Thomas entitled “The People’s Justice,” in which he explores the justice’s favored judicial philosophy of originalism. Thapar posits that the theory is wrongly described as always favoring the “rich over the poor, the strong over the weak, the corporation over the consumer.”
He walks through Thomas’ reasoning in a handful of cases dealing with affirmative action, the Second Amendment, school vouchers, a cross burning law and public takings of private property, among others, and contends that Thomas’ originalism “more often favors the ordinary people who come before the court – because the core idea behind originalism is honoring the will of the people.”
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President Donald Trump nominated Thapar in to serve on the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017, and he was also on Trump’s short list for Supreme Court vacancies. Thapar, 54, is a favorite of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who handpicked him to serve as the US attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky in 2006.
Thapar declined to talk about specifics regarding real estate magnate Harlan Crow’s hospitality to Thomas that included rides on private jets…
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