US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been under fire for his legal opinions and accepting costly gifts from a billionaire Republican, has dismissed the criticism as “nastiness” and “lies,” according to American media.
“There’s certainly been a lot of negativity in our lives, my wife and I, over the last few years, but we choose not to focus on it,” the New York Times quoted Thomas as saying Friday at a judicial conference in the southern US state of Alabama.
Staunch conservative Thomas, the longest-serving justice on the court, has been embroiled in controversy since it emerged last year that he had gone on a trip paid for by Republican donor and real estate tycoon Harlan Crow.
The justice has also faced calls to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election because of his wife’s involvement with efforts to block Joe Biden’s victory.
“What you are going to find, especially in Washington, is that people are going to pride themselves on being awful,” Thomas said, according to the Washington Post. “It’s a hideous place.”
Thomas stressed that he and his wife try to ignore their critics and focus on the positive.
“You don’t get to prevent people from doing horrible things or saying horrible things,” the justice was quoted as saying by the Times. “But one, you have to understand and accept the fact that they don’t, they can’t change you unless you permit that.”
According to a ProPublica investigation released last year, 75-year-old Thomas took a single trip to Indonesia paid for by Crow, which was likely worth $500,000.
He has also accompanied Crow — whose acquaintance with the justice was described by the New York Times in 2011 as “unusual and ethically sensitive” — on excursions to an elite all-male wilderness lodge in California, as well as properties in Texas and New York state over the last two decades.
Crow told ProPublica that his gifts to Thomas were “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends,” and that the two had never discussed any ongoing cases.
Thomas, who was appointed to the court in 1991 after being accused of sexual harassment by a former aide, joined the majority of judges who overturned the national right to abortion last year.
He went above and beyond his colleagues, arguing that the conservative-dominated court’s verdicts on contraception and same-sex marriage should be reviewed.