Harlan Crow, the billionaire Republican donor who we learned this week has gifted hundreds of thousands of dollars in luxury travel to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (which Thomas did not disclose), has filled his property with Nazi memorabilia and Hitler artifacts and has a garden full of dictator sculptures, the Washingtonian reports. The artifacts reportedly include two of Hitler’s paintings and a signed copy of the Nazi dictator’s manifesto, Mein Kampf.
One of the statues in Crow’s dictator garden, apparently, is Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, who imposed a total abortion ban enforced by monthly gynecological exams. So it makes sense that the man would be a big fan of one of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Crow’s explanation for collecting fascist memorabilia, per the Washingtonian, is downright hilarious:
Crow, the billionaire heir to a real estate fortune, has said that he’s filled his property with these mementoes because he hates communism and fascism. Nonetheless, his collections caused an uproar back in 2015 when Marco Rubio attended a fundraiser at Crow’s house on the eve of Yom Kippur. Rubio’s critics thought the timing was inappropriate given, you know, the Hitler stuff.
As we wrote earlier this week (based on ProPublica’s bombshell report), the gifts the Texas real estate mogul has bestowed upon Thomas include:
- flights on Crow’s private jet
- at least three vacations on a 162-foot superyacht with a private chef
- Annual stays at Crow’s private, 105-acre resort in the Adirondacks which has “25 fireplaces, three boathouses, clay tennis court, and batting cage,” and “a lifesize replica of the Harry Potter character Hagrid’s hut”
Thomas responded to the allegations of corruption, which are most certainly illegal, by claiming that Harlan and Kathy Crow are among his and his insurrectionist wife Ginni’s “dearest friends” and that he had no idea any of this ran afoul of the law. The justice on the high court—who, again, is supposed to be one of the the nation’s foremost experts in American law—basically says he’d asked some of his friends on the court if it was cool to do this and they said sure!, but as the “guidelines are now being changed,” he’ll do his best to be less corrupt going forward.
Needless to say, it is telling and incredibly fucking concerning (if not entirely surprising) that a sitting Supreme Court justice is being bankrolled by a literal Hitler stan.
A source the Washingtonian spoke with who had visited Harlan’s Texas home told the magazine that the evening was “just strange—they had family photos in one room, then all this WWII stuff in another room, and dictators in the backyard.” Cool, cool.