Writer hits at Clarence Thomas as 'penance' for smearing sex harassment accuser years ago
Political operative David Brock helped lead the smear campaign against Clarence Thomas' sexual harassment accuser Anita Hill — and he said he's still doing penance for what he calls his “original sin."
Brock was a young conservative when he sneered that Hill was "a bit nutty and a bit slutty" in an infamous report based on dubious sourcing. But three decades later he's publishing “Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America" to denounce the right-wing transformation of the judicial branch, reported the New York Times.
"The real interest of Brock’s book lies in his singular personal history," wrote reporter Jennifer Szalai.
"He enumerates some of his misdeeds, including blackmailing a woman who was a source for a book by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, because their reporting supported Hill’s testimony — 'testimony that I knew was likely true.' He apologizes, not for the first time, to Hill and to 'others I smeared.' Repairing credibility is an ongoing process."
Brock initially discredited Hill's sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during his 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings. However, Brock later underwent a transformation, becoming a liberal activist and publicly apologizing to Hill for his actions. The Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings highlighted the high-profile clash between Brock and Hill.
"As Abramson, a former executive editor of The Times, once put it, 'I think the problem is that once David Brock admits he knowingly wrote lies, it’s hard to figure out when to believe him,'" Szalai added. "'Stench' is inevitably suffused with dramatic irony: Brock, a seasoned political street fighter with an inglorious past, is warning about 'the integrity of the high court.'"
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The 62-year-old Brock has never met Thomas, but he feels their reputations are inextricably linked due to his efforts to undermine Hill's credibility during the justice's confirmation hearings.
“I observed it, I survived it,” Brock said. “The seeds of the monstrous court, and the campaign to capture it, start with Thomas, and so everything leads there and comes from there.”
Brock reveals in his book that former Rep. Liz Cheneyl who was the lead Republican on the House select committee to investigate Jan. 6, blocked scrutiny of Ginni Thomas, who exchanged messages with then-chief of staff Mark Meadows and GOP state legislators stating that the 2020 election was stolen.
"Brock wants 'Stench' to mobilize readers," Szalai wrote. "But he also wants to reach people who 'don’t identify so much with either camp.' His narrative is only sparingly interrupted by extravagant flourishes: a country in danger of becoming a 'Christian nationalist abomination'; a remark by Thomas’s wife, Ginni, that conveys 'plutonium-powered nuttiness.'"