Crystal Clanton’s upcoming Supreme Court clerkship, one of the most coveted jobs in the American legal profession, is the latest triumph in her redemption from a highly publicized 2017 contro…
The email went out to members of Justice Clarence Thomas’ law clerk network late last month celebrating his newest addition to an exclusive club. The justice’s selection needed no introduction.
Her upcoming Supreme Court clerkship, one of the most coveted jobs in the American legal profession, is the latest triumph in her redemption from a highly publicized 2017 controversy over the racist messages. The blowup led to her departure from a group she helped build, Turning Point USA, which seeks to increase the influence of conservative students on college campuses across the country.
But the federal judicial code of conduct — which the Supreme Court is not bound to follow — advises judges to avoid “favoritism” and to “exercise the power of appointment fairly and only on the basis of merit.” A 2016 advisory opinion cautioned against a judge’s giving “the appearance that someone may gain an advantage” in hiring because of the person’s “broader connections to a judge.”
Clanton was raised in Gurnee, Illinois, a middle-class suburb of Chicago, by her grandparents, whom she revered as role models. “They’re perfect examples of strength, grace and kindness,” she told the website futurefirstlady.com in 2015, which highlighted her as a “Weekly Conservative Woman.” That something was joining Turning Point USA, founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk, a young conservative activist, out of his parents’ house in the Chicago suburbs. Clanton was an active member through her college years at Marquette University in Wisconsin. She became national field director, appeared on Fox News, made inroads at other universities and wrote several articles for an affiliated website, including “5 Things Hillary Really Said.
By then she was on a rise of her own. Clanton had become the top lieutenant to Kirk, who in a February 2016 post on Twitter, now X, lavished her with praise. He shared a picture of a packed room of organizers and wrote: “See this? This was created thanks to” Clanton and “her amazing leadership. Without her, there is no TPUSA.” That fall, Clanton was quoted in a Time magazine article titled “The GOP’s Young-Women Whisperers.”A clue to her departure came in December that year.
The justice — who had been through his own media firestorm in his confirmation hearings when Anita Hill, a former subordinate, accused him of earlier sexual harassment — agreed to take in Clanton. “And she lived with us for almost a year,” he wrote. Clanton started at the school in the fall of 2019. It is unclear whether she was still living with the Thomases at that point, but the school was only a half-hour from their home and Clanton was as close as ever to the couple. They listed her on their family page in an annual printed clerk directory as their “nearly adopted daughter,” and prominently featured her in photos in the Thomases’ annual Christmas letters.
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