- Crystal Clanton was kicked out of Turning Point USA when it was reported that she sent racist texts.
- Despite that, she moved in with Clarence Thomas, got a law degree, and landed plum clerkships.
- Now a judicial committee has determined that there will be no official investigation.
The federal courts have spiked an investigation into racist text messages sent by a conservative activist-turned-law clerk who got jobs working alongside two federal judges with the full-throated support of Clarence Thomas.
In 2015 and 2016, Crystal Clanton was a key leader at Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk's youth-oriented conservative nonprofit. She got a picture with Donald Trump's sons, mobilized high-school activists, and trashed liberal academics in an appearance on Fox News.
It all came crashing down when the New Yorker reported in 2017 that she had texted a friend, "I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all." The existence of the texts, sent when she was in college, was confirmed by the Washington Post in 2022.
A source also shared a screenshot of the texts with Insider on the condition it not be published. Her offensive messages are followed by quotidian chit-chat about meeting at Starbucks, as the Post reported.
After her exile, Clanton attended law school and even lived for a time with Clarence and Ginni Thomas. She also landed clerkships with two federal judges — Judge Corey Maze, a federal district judge in Alabama, and Judge William Pryor, an influential appellate judge.
Last year, a federal judicial panel ordered that an investigation take place into whether Clanton actually sent the texts. But according to an October 31 decision, Pryor and Maze successfully argued that the panel didn't have the authority to order an investigation.
Even in today's zero-sum political environment, Clanton's elevation comes as a shock to some. William Hodes, a legal ethics guru who once represented a white supremacist who was fighting to become a licensed lawyer, said in an email exchange with Insider last year that judges should know better than to hire someone like Clanton.
"Even pre-law school behavior like this should disqualify one from a federal clerkship — not as a legal matter but because the judges should have the sensibility to look elsewhere," he wrote.
Other judges took Clarence Thomas's word that Crystal Clanton isn't racist
Since bombing out of Turning Point, Clanton has won praise from some of her law-school peers and professors — along with one of the most influential judges in America.
Mediaite reported in 2018 that Clanton got a job helping Ginni Thomas with media production. She enrolled in and graduated from George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, and Clarence Thomas later said that she lived with him and Ginni for about a year.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that Thomas himself had vouched for Clanton. "I know Crystal Clanton and I know bigotry," he reportedly wrote. "Bigotry is antithetical to her nature." He also claimed, without evidence, that she was a victim of "defamation." (Clanton herself has never claimed that.)
Clanton didn't respond to phone calls or a text sent to a number listed for her in a 2022 bar record. The Supreme Court public information officer also didn't respond to a request for comment directed to Thomas, and Pryor didn't respond to an email sent to him by Insider through a court press officer.
The closest Clanton has come to apologizing or acknowledging the texts was in the New Yorker article. "I have no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am and the same was true when I was a teenager," she told writer Jane Mayer. (She was 20 when she sent the texts.)
After finishing law school, Clanton clerked for Maze, a federal judge in Anniston, Alabama from 2022 to 2023. She got that job because she was recommended for it by Judge Pryor, who hadn't yet worked with Clanton, according to a person with knowledge of her hiring.
Such placements aren't unusual in the world of federal-court clerkships. Pryor is the chief judge of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and his word carries a lot of sway with other judges. He is one of a handful of judges nationwide with a reputation as a "feeder judge" — one whose clerks often go on to clerk with Supreme Court justices.
Still, news of Clanton's jobs with Maze and Pryor sparked outcry. Media outlets and members of Congress assailed her hiring. The official response was bare-bones.
The case was referred to the Second Circuit, an appeals court based in New York. Judge Debra Livington, the Second Circuit's chief judge, wrote in 2022 that Judges Pryor and Maze simply concluded that the New Yorker's reporting wasn't true. The decision to hire her was based on the recommendations she'd gotten, including from Charlie Kirk, who had sent her packing in 2017.
A thorough investigation ordered and then canceled
But another obscure panel of judges — the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability of the Judicial Conference of the US — essentially reversed course. They said Maze and Pryor's diligence wasn't good enough and called for an investigation that would entail contacting the people named in the New Yorker article as having knowledge of Clanton's actions.
That was in July 2022. In its new decision, the Second Circuit panel revealed that Maze and Pryor objected, saying that the Judicial Conduct and Disability panel had no authority to order an investigation. So the Second Circuit panel consulted with the Judicial Conference's Executive Committee, a group of seven judges, which concluded this past June that Maze and Pryor were right.
Gabby Fe, one of the people named in the New Yorker story making claims of racism against Clanton, called the decision "outrageous."
Hodes, the legal ethicist, said that even judges who think the New Yorker or its reporter Jane Mayer have an ax to grind against Clarence Thomas should want the facts to be uncovered.
"There's way too much here for the [Second Circuit] to have just dismissed it as 'insufficiently proven' or 'sufficiently investigated,'" he told Insider in his email.
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