Crystal Clanton

Crystal C. Clanton (also known as "Crystal J. Clanton") (born March 1995) is an American attorney who, as of March 2024, is a law clerk for Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, one of the most conservative members of the federal bench.

A 2022 graduate of the Antonin Scalia Law School, Clanton previously clerked for conservative Judge Corey L. Maze of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. She was chosen in 2024 by United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be one of his law clerks during the 2024–2025 term.

She had served as the national field director for Turning Point USA, but was fired from that position after sending a racist text message.

Biography

According to The New Yorker, Clanton was accused of sending a text message in 2015, while she was national field director for Turning Point USA, saying "I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story." Clanton told The New Yorker in 2017, "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." Mediaite in 2018 said she also had sent an anti-Arab message via Snapchat. The post featured a photograph of a man who appeared to be Arab, accompanied by a caption that Clanton had added: "Just thinking about ways to do another 9/11."

Following her firing from Turning Point USA, Clanton worked for right-wing extremist Ginni Thomas, Justice Thomas's wife, and lived at the Thomas's house for almost a year. The Thomases have called Clanton a "near adopted daughter". Ginni Thomas was a member of the Turning Point USA advisory council at the time of Clanton's departure.

In 2021 conservatives Maze and Pryor hired Clanton to clerk for each of them, first for Maze, then for Pryor. Seven Democratic members of Congress protested the hiring in a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts and Circuit Judge Charles Wilson, asking for an investigation, writing that Maze and Pryor "hired an individual with a history of nakedly racist and hateful conduct as a future law clerk in their chambers. Placing an individual with this history in such close proximity to judicial decision-making threatens to seriously undermine the public's faith in the federal judiciary." The investigation was not pursued after a ruling by the judicial council of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which stated that the judges had performed adequate due diligence, which included a reference letter from Justice Thomas. Thomas' letter said, "I know Crystal Clanton and I know bigotry. Bigotry is antithetical to her nature and character." Although Judge Debra Livingston of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit's cursory ethics investigation of Judges Pryor and Maze did not include interviewing Clanton or multiple colleagues with first-hand knowledge of Clanton's racist texts or reviewing disputed texts, Judge Livingston dismissed the ethics complaints. When the U.S. Judicial Conference asked a special committee to gather more evidence, Judges Pryor and Maze invoked a legal rule to bar the Judicial Conference from reopening Livingston's findings. With our country's weak judicial ethics system, Justice Thomas can again ignore ethical rules and hire Clanton as one of his clerks.

External links

• Rankin, Bill (14 January 2022). "Judge Pryor cleared of allegations involving hiring of controversial clerk". Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
• Marcus, Ruth (10 November 2023). "Opinion The Crystal Clanton case shows a system failure". Washington Post. Retrieved 25 February 2024.