Indicted seditionists and torture enthusiasts agree: Clarence Thomas’s behavior is beyond reproach

A group for former Clarence Thomas clerks have issued an open letter impartially defending the unimpeachable integritude of their former bosses, and sometimes the jokes just write themselves:

The fact that they didn’t even bother to tell the indicted and about to be disbarred guy that maybe he should sit this one out is a good indication that the letter isn’t intended to persuade anybody, and somehow the “arguments” it makes are even worse than that:

As reporters have pried more and more details, none of which Thomas has voluntarily disclosed, the facts have gotten worse, and their previous defenses have grown inoperative. Thomas turns out to have not one but several close personal billionaire friends, and they turn out to subsidize some rather lavish tastes on the justice’s part.

After the most recent revelations, Thomas’s defenders have gone conspicuously silent. Organs like National Review and conservative legal apparatchik Ed Whelan, who loudly dismissed evidence of wrongdoing by Thomas, have had nothing to say about Thomas’s many billionaire patrons.

In fairness, Ed is still frantically searching Zillow looking for the real grifter.

Now, finally, comes a defense (sort of): A total of 112 former Thomas law clerks have signed an open letter defending him against charges of impropriety. It is a revealing document.

By “defending,” I don’t mean detailing the charges against Thomas and explaining why they lack merit. Rather, their approach is simply to insist Thomas is a good person while pretending the exhaustive evidence of his unethical behavior does not exist at all.

In lieu of any engagement with the facts of Thomas’s misconduct, the letter is padded out with biographical detail, in the style of a book report written by a sixth grader. The authors explain that Thomas “descended from West African slaves, was “born to a young mother, not more than 20, in segregated Georgia.” We learn  “His father left. And a fire took all he had and the shack where he lived,” and even receive details of major world events that took place during his life. (“Then came 1968. King was assassinated. Then Kennedy. It transformed him. He left behind hopes of the priesthood. He found Black Power. He wrote about revolution.”)

I shouted out “who killed the Kennedys,” and after all I said “whoever did it if you were alive when it happened you are allowed to accept as many bribes as you want, as long as you continue to vote the Federalist Society party line.”

You have to give his protegees meta-credit for giving him exactly the quality of defense his conduct merits.

…”Was there some sort of deadline for this letter? Couldn’t one of the better writers on this list — and they exist — have intervened and said they’d take a spin at drafting something that didn’t sound so juvenile? So many questions!”