Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke out about the criticism flowing his way in recent months that has spilled into attacks on his friends and family.
The longest-serving justice on the current Supreme Court has been under fire for reports about lavish gifts from his friend and conservative donor Harlan Crow. He has also refused to recuse himself from cases related to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, though his wife Virginia Thomas was involved in the fight to contest the results of the 2020 election.
Thomas made the comments at a judicial conference in Alabama, though he did not specifically address the controversies.
“My wife and I, the last two or three years, just the nastiness and the lies,” Thomas said. “There’s certainly been a lot of negativity in our lives, my wife and I, over the last few years, but we choose not to focus on it.”
Supreme Court justices don’t generally speak with reporters or in public, so Thomas’s comments are rare. He repeated that he and his wife try to ignore their critics.
“You don’t get to prevent people from doing horrible things or saying horrible things,” he said. “But one, you have to understand and accept the fact that they don’t, they can’t change you unless you permit that.”
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The conservative justice previously faced criticism for not disclosing years of gifts and trips from his friend Crow and other conservative donors. Virginia’s controversy stems from text messages she made to former President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, urging him to pursue overturning the 2020 election after Trump lost to President Joe Biden.
Thomas is both the oldest and longest-serving Supreme Court justice. Former president George H.W. Bush appointed him in 1991 to succeed Thurgood Marshall, the nation’s first black Supreme Court justice.
