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An email from a reader helped a team of ProPublica reporters uncover secret tuition payments Harlan Crow made for a family member of Clarence Thomas. Now we’re looking for tips on the election, and you can help.

An email from a reader helped a team of ProPublica reporters uncover secret tuition payments Harlan Crow made for a family member of Clarence Thomas. Now we’re looking for tips on the election, and you can help.https://t.co/HAdATtcRYh

— ProPublica (@propublica) June 21, 2024

Excerpts from the story:

A few hours after we published a story on the luxury travel a billionaire provided to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the email arrived in my inbox.

A reader had tapped out a single sentence on their iPhone and hit send: We should look, it said, at a relative Thomas had taken in and raised as a son. The reader informed me that Harlan Crow, the same politically connected billionaire who had bankrolled the justice’s travels around the globe, had also paid private school tuition for the relative.

My colleagues and I chased down the tip; a key break came when we found direct evidence of the billionaire’s tuition payments in some bankruptcy filings for one of the private schools in question. As we reported in the resulting story a few weeks later, the billionaire had paid roughly $100,000 for private school tuition, essentially a gift of cash to a sitting Supreme Court justice.

Crow’s office told us that he “has long been passionate about the importance of quality education and giving back to those less fortunate.” Thomas didn’t respond to questions for the story. On Friday, the justice acknowledged for the first time in a new financial disclosure filing that he should have publicly reported two free vacations he received from Crow.

Going from a tip or rumor to a confirmed story can take weeks or months of reporting, of course. That’s especially true because I focus on the rich and powerful: people, companies and organizations that use money and influence to shield themselves from scrutiny. My ability to home in on those important stories relies on hearing from people like you.

Right now I’m reporting on the election. There’s no shortage of political coverage, but I’m still convinced there are important stories about wrongdoing that haven’t been told yet. I’m interested in the world of Donald Trump — his campaign, businesses and the people around him — as well as the broader 2024 political scene. Tips about other candidates, Democrats and Republicans, are also welcome.

I would rat these people out in a heartbeat, and no one would even need to pay me $10,000.

Open thread.

ProPublica: Now Here’s a Tip Line I Can Get Behind!Post + Comments (88)

Sutherland died yesterday.  He’s on my list of “greats.”   I’ve been thinking of what was great about him, and I’m going to pick one performance, his role as Calvin Jarrett in Ordinary People.

One of the aspects of Sutherland’s greatness is that he turned in great performances in so many genres by taking up just the right amount of space.  Ordinary People had so many good performances:  Timothy Hutton, as Conrad Jarrett, the boy who lived when his brother drowned, and then attempted suicide.  Mary Tyler Moore, playing against type as Beth Jarrett, the mother who wants to appear to be perfect yet has her world shattered.  Sutherland’s reserved performance was, in my opinion, the best of the bunch.  He had a tough part to play, an apparently superficial, successful Lake Forest attorney who spouts platitudes in an attempt to keep his family together.

He never intruded on his co-stars performances.  But there are two pivotal scenes where the mask comes off the superficial glad-hander Calvin: one is when he has a talk with Conrad about how he’s the stronger kid in the family, and the other, painful, awful scene where he tells Beth that their marriage is over.  Each is played with emotion that’s just so much and nothing more, consistent with the self-censorship and oppression of their WASP environment.  He inhabited the character — the ability to be Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H, the stoner professor in Animal House, and Calvin Jarrett, showed his versatility and talent.

Contrast Sutherland’s performance with Judd Hirsch chewing up the scenery as Conrad’s therapist.  Sutherland could have been supercilious, maudlin or cardboard in his role.  He was none of those things, and that’s greatness.

Donald Sutherland, RIPPost + Comments (66)