Clanton was fired by Turning Point USA after a New Yorker article by Jane Mayer revealed texts by the then-national field director employee saying, “i hate black people. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story.” Turning Point president Charlie Kirk told Mayer he fired Clanton after he saw the texts. Clanton responded to Mayer, not with an unequivocal denial but by saying, “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.” Clanton was 20 when the texts were sent.

But then Clanton was taken under the wing of the Thomases, given a prestigious clerkship with a federal appeals judge that is a springboard to a Supreme Court clerkship and suddenly, Clanton has been recast as a victim.

Ruth Marcus picked up the story in The Washington Post on October 8, 2021. Marcus wrote that Clanton had been hired by Ginni Thomas, went to law school and became a clerk for “William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the 11th Circuit and on Donald Trump’s original shortlist for the Supreme Court.” Marcus also noted that “Pryor has sent on law clerks to every conservative [Supreme Court] justice except Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and most of those have worked for Thomas, who over the years has selected an astonishing 13 Pryor clerks.”

I’ll pause to point out that Ginni Thomas (whose seditious behavior and activism should have forced Clarence Thomas off the bench long ago) has her own history of racism.

But in case you think Clarence Thomas isn’t in synch, if not cahoots, with Ginni, his fingerprints are very much all over Clanton’s dubious rehabilitation. On January 18, Marcus revisited the story with some new information, namely a letter unearthed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from Clarence Thomas, defending Pryor for hiring her:

“Crystal came to live with us and work with my wife about three years ago after her controversial and public departure from Turning Point USA … My wife informed me of the horrible way in which she had been treated at Turning Point and asked that she be allowed to live with us. I agreed, and she lived with us for almost a year.”

Thomas relates how he encouraged Clanton, “understandably distraught and depressed,” to go to law school; recommended her when she applied to law school; and then suggested her to Pryor as a clerk, informing him of “the grossly out of character and unfounded allegations against her.” Thomas concludes, “It is certainly my intention to consider her for a clerkship should she perform as I expect and excel in her clerkships.”

Now Pryor has made the ludicrous claim, “I determined, after careful investigation, that Crystal had been a victim of a false accusation of racist behavior by a tabloid reporter whose central accusation relied entirely on an anonymous source in her scandalous report.” Marcus points out that The New Yorker is no tabloid and that her sourcing was neither anonymous nor based on a single individual.

Pryor also claims Thomas told him that Turning Point has “determined that a rogue employee had compromised the accounts of several co-workers, including Crystal, to make it appear that they had engaged in misconduct when they had not.” Never mind that Kirk told Mayer, on the record, that he fired Clanton because of the texts. Clanton’s lawyer now reportedly says she did not publicly deny her behavior because of a nondisclosure agreement with TPUSA.

If you believe this load of hooey, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Or better yet, a Capitol insurrection and coup attempt repackaged as a patriotic lovefest.