McEwen, his former lover, has a different view, portrayed in her book, her speech last month and in a series of exclusive interviews with me:
"The mask he has worn for so long has slipped during the past 20 years to reveal dishonesty, greed, and abuse of the public trust," she told me. "Fueled by self-hatred and resentment, Justice Thomas has allowed himself to be purchased."
McEwen's lecture was the first time she provided her view on the justice's overall fitness to serve based on her varied experiences with him and as part of Washington's legal community. The retired judge at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year published a blunt memoir, DC Unmasked and Undressed. In a powerful narrative style that largely avoids politics and policy, it recounts her search for happiness in law and romance after a harsh childhood with cruel parents in then-segregated Washington, DC. She says she decided to break up with Thomas before his current marriage in 1987, his second.
The Senate committee chaired by Joe Biden failed to call witnesses who could have supported Hill publicly. The conservative group Citizens United had mounted a television ad campaign backing Thomas and targeting Biden and two other prominent Senate Democrats for what it called their past scandals.
The campaign, devised by Citizens United founder Floyd Brown following his 1988 successes with the notorious "Willie Horton" presidential ads, ridiculed Biden and his colleagues Ted Kennedy and Alan Cranston, with a headline, "Who Will Judge the Judge?" McEwen was by then a former counsel to the committee while Biden was chairman. She says Biden and others on staff knew during the confirmation battle that she had dated Thomas during the years he supervised Hill.
McEwen has a unique perspective as not only a companion of Thomas for what she describes as five of his formative years in Washington, but also as a former federal prosecutor, defense litigator and law professor. "He
transformed himself," she says, "from a self-pitying
alcoholic into a campaigner who gave speeches for Republican candidates
and causes all over the United States. His reward would be a seat on
the Supreme Court."
But, in her words, "He had turned into a bully, a
religious hypocrite, and a very angry man as a result of the masks that
he had to wear in order to please the Republican conservatives and
evangelicals who would support his nomination."
When McEwen first spoke up most of my readers valued her contribution at long last to share insights about the nation's most controversial and arguably important Supreme Court battle in history.
But a few suggested to me and in reader comments that there's no longer any point to hear about whether Thomas perjured himself. Even McEwen says the Judiciary Committee loses jurisdiction if a nominee successfully lies to get a job, although that need not be an obstacle to investigation since the FBI is already probing the matter and ranking Judiciary Committee Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama argued in his 1998 law review article that there is no stature of limitations on an impeachment action.
More immediately, Cain, in seeking to rescue his own reputation, thus reopens the focus not simply on demonstrable fraud by Thomas but on the whole web of their mutual and troubling relationships.
And for those who might fear that this inquiry is unfair because Cain and Thomas are black? Virginia Thomas isn't, and neither are the Koch Brothers and Harlan Crow. But even if they were this should be the start of what almost everyone claims they want -- unmasking all the big-time fraudsters in Washington, without fear or favor.
The Justice Integrity Project site excerpts many recent columns about both Cain and Thomas on the matters referenced above.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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