Clarence Thomas's $267,230 R.V. and the Friend Who Financed It

[NJCher]

Paywall free link at NY Times.

The vehicle is a key part of the justice’s just-folks persona. It’s also a luxury motor coach that was funded by someone else’s money.

snip
By Jo Becker and Julie Tate
Aug. 5, 2023
Updated 1:14 p.m. ET
Justice Clarence Thomas met the recreational vehicle of his dreams in Phoenix, on a November Friday in 1999.

With some time to kill before an event that night, he headed to a dealership just west of the airport. There sat a used Prevost Le Mirage XL Marathon, eight years old and 40 feet long, with orange flames licking down the sides. In the words of one of his biographers, “he kicked the tires and climbed aboard,” then quickly negotiated a handshake deal. A few weeks later, Justice Thomas drove his new motor coach off the lot and into his everyman, up-by-the-bootstraps self-mythology.

There he is behind the wheel during a rare 2007 interview with “60 Minutes,” talking about how the steel-clad converted bus allows him to escape the “meanness that you see in Washington.” He regularly slips into his speeches his love of driving it through the American heartland — “the part we fly over.” And in a documentary financed by conservative admirers, Justice Thomas, who was born into poverty in Georgia, waxes rhapsodic about the familiarity of spending time with the regular folks he meets along the way in R.V. parks and Walmart parking lots.

“I don’t have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States,” he told the filmmakers, adding: “There’s something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer being around that.”

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[Goonch]

1. 👇👇👇👁️👁️

[spooky3]

2. Health care exec "friend" loaned him $--very vague

“ He would not say how much he had lent Justice Thomas, how much the justice had repaid and whether any of the debt had been forgiven or otherwise discharged. He declined to provide The Times with a copy of a loan agreement — or even say if one existed. Nor would he share the basic terms of the loan, such as what, if any, interest rate had been charged or whether Justice Thomas had adhered to an agreed-upon repayment schedule. And when asked to elaborate on what he had meant when he said the loan had been “satisfied,” he did not respond.”

Anthony Welters, the “friend”, loaned him the $ AFTER Thomas was appointed as Justice.

[Joinfortmill]

3. He's a disgrace to his country.

[Brainfodder]

4. All these greedy assholes are showing us the loopholes in our system.

Maybe treat these with the urgency of cracks in a dam for ONCE?

Yeah, I know a broken system repairing itself is looking impossible, still!

[Hekate]

5. It will forever gall me that this was who was chosen to fill Thurgood Marshall's seat

It’s like the choice of Handmaid Amy when RBG died. How insulting can you be?

[cyclonefence]

6. I feel that way, too

John Danforth, who sort of sponsored Thomas, was a moderate republican who must not have known anything about this grifting clown other than his rise from poverty (via affirmative action) to success in the legal system.

Anita Hill tried to make us listen, but Joe Biden (of all people) was (I think) chair of the Judicial Committee and refused to allow the other women Hill said had had similar experiences to testify.

They kept trying to make a case that the gorgeous Hill had the hots for schlubby Thomas and this testimony was some kind of revenge. As I recall, a man who Hill *had* dated testified, and he was a hottie.

Danforth was an ordained Episcopal priest, to0, which to me ices the cake.

Arlen Specter told Hill he was going to bring perjury charges against her. I happened to attend a small gathering where Specter was present, and I asked him if we could look for those perjury charges any time soon. He walked away, the coward.

[NowISeetheLight]

7. Don't Remember

I haven't agreed with several SCOTUS Justices. Over the years (cough, cough, Scalia). But I'd always considered them mostly ethical. Thomas and his revealed actions have destroyed that image. I compare his to Kagan who wouldn't accept bagels from a friend and I just shake my head.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

8. Healthcare exec who helped Clarence Thomas buy his $267K RV clams up about financial arrangement

Thomas lies about everything

Link to tweet

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/healthcare-exec-who-helped-clarence-thomas-buy-his-267k-rv-clams-up-about-financial-arrangement/ar-AA1ePWRD?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds

Faced with questions about the financial details tied to helping Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas purchase a $276K recreational vehicle decades ago, the healthcare executive who gave him a helping hand shut off communications after the New York Timespressed him for details.

With Thomas already under scrutiny for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in trips and gifts from wealthy conservative admirers, the Times reported on Saturday that Thomas' boasts about "skrimping" to purchase the used 40-foot long Prevost Le Mirage XL Marathon fell apart after a title search......

As the Times reported, "His Prevost Marathon cost $267,230, according to title history records obtained by The New York Times. And Justice Thomas, who in the ensuing years would tell friends how he had scrimped and saved to afford the motor coach, did not buy it on his own. In fact, the purchase was underwritten, at least in part, by Anthony Welters, a close friend who made his fortune in the health care industry," adding, "He provided Justice Thomas with financing that experts said a bank would have been unlikely to extend — not only because Justice Thomas was already carrying a lot of debt, but because the Marathon brand’s high level of customization makes its used motor coaches difficult to value."

Asked for comment, Weleter sent an email to the Times, explaining, "Here is what I can share. Twenty-five years ago, I loaned a friend money, as I have other friends and family. We’ve all been on one side or the other of that equation. He used it to buy a recreational vehicle, which is a passion of his.” Adding that the “the loan was satisfied,” nine years later, Welters provided the Times with a "photograph of the original title bearing his signature and a handwritten 'lien release' date of Nov. 22, 2008."