Boosted sales of Clarence Thomas’ book linked to conservative activist — casting shadows on royalty payments
Leonard Leo — “a powerful longtime friend” to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — “pitched in to juice the sales” of Thomas’ 2008 book, “My Grandfather’s Son,” the Daily Beast reports. But, despite earning Thomas a $1.5 million advance, the conservative justice “hasn’t reported any royalty income” form the book since 2008.
Judicial ethics experts, the Beast reports, note the “benign” explanation that “the memoir hasn’t sold enough copies to ‘earn out’ beyond” the advance. But, they warn that even that explanation “raises ethics concerns that apply to the justices.”
Washington University-St. Louis School of Law legal ethics expert Kathleen Clark said such advances could be classified as gifts — and are therefore reportable.
“One of the problems with the Court having financial transactions like book advances is that in theory those advances may not reflect the commercial value of the book, and appear as a windfall for the justice,” Clark said. “It raises the specter of an advance that is actually something like a gift.”
New York University legal ethics expert Stephen Gillers agreed.
“A big advance that a publisher could not reasonably expect to recoup in sales is really a gift and should be reported, or at least understood, as such,” Gillers said.
“It is possible of course that Thomas has assigned all royalties to someone else, in which case they are no longer income,” Gillers noted.
According to the Beast, several experts suggested “Thomas could have donated the royalties to another entity, such as a charity.” Or, as Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington opined, “Another possibility is that he assigned the rights to his wife’s consulting firm.”
But while such a move could obscure Thomas’ royalties, it raises more questions about “the couple’s entanglements with wealthy benefactors,” — including Leo, the Beast reports. Leo’s private PR company “promoted the 2021 Kindle release of Thomas’ memoir, along with a number of other ventures exalting Thomas."
“Leo was facilitating all of these events, and Thomas’s participation in them, and some of them apparently involve the promotion of the book,” Canter said. “If he’s tapping into that network of dark money groups to purchase the books and they’re the same dark money groups presenting arguments to the court, it looks like Thomas is beholden to Leo and those supporters and the grounds for recusal in those cases are strengthened.”
Campaign Legal Center counsel for legal ethics Danielle Caputo also highlighted the Leo connection.
“That raises questions, understandably, about those strong personal relationships and ties, and where Thomas may not recuse himself from cases that may involve Leo,” Caputo said. “It leads the public to wonder whether this creates some sense of impropriety, and whether the justice will be favorable to one party over the other.”
