Impeaching Thomas

David Brock penned memo on impeaching Clarence Thomas

By Nick Gass

An email sent in October 2010 by Sid Blumenthal, a close confidante of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, shared a memo from David Brock in which Brock broached the subject of impeaching Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The email, shared by Blumenthal with the subject line "H: Brock memo here, have many more ideas on this. S," laid out a summary of interviews published that week in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Washington's ABC affiliate, WJLA, with Lillian McEwen, a former prosecutor, law professor and judge, who said she was romantically involved with Thomas during the time of the Anita Hill scandal.

McEwen was not subpoenaed to testify by Democrats or Republicans during the infamous October 1991 hearing, even after appealing to then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, for whom she had worked on the Judiciary Committee. According to Maureen Dowd's column cited from Oct. 23, 2010, Biden only allowed women who had professional relationships with Thomas to testify.

The memo, titled "Memo on Impeaching Clarence Thomas," cited the Times article in which McEwen called pornography for Thomas "just a part of his personality structure" and that he frequented a Washington store "that catered to his needs" and allegedly bled over into his personal relationships. The assertions stood in contrast with Thomas' sworn testimony in 1991 in which he denied having any sexual discussions with Hill.

The memo also detailed differences between McEwen's 2010 accounts and Thomas' testimony in terms of workplace behavior, including incidents in which Thomas remarked on the size of a woman's breasts or her bra size, as well as making the case for suppression of evidence and intimidating witnesses.

"A fourth woman with knowledge of Thomas's behavior, Kaye Savage, was first named in a 1994 book Strange Justice by Jill Abramson and Jane Mayer. Savage was a close colleague of Thomas's and Hill's in the Reagan Administration. Savage was interviewed by Judiciary Committee staff after she contacted the committee, and a staffer made notes, but she was never called to testify. Her story did not become public until Abramson and Mayer obtained the staff notes and interviewed Savage, who told the authors of visiting Thomas's apartment during the time Hill was working for Thomas and observing stacks of pornographic magazines and all of the walls of the apartment papered with centerfolds of large-breasted nude women," Brock wrote.

Brock, who as a journalist in the 1990s wrote the book "The Real Anita Hill" casting doubt on the former nominee's assistant,saidin 2001 that he lied in print in that book in part to protect Thomas' reputation.