Republican elected officials are slowly coming to the defense of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas after a bombshell report from ProPublica revealed Thursday that GOP megadonor Harlan Crow paid the tuition of the justice's great-nephew, who Thomas has said he raised as his own, for two years while he attended private and boarding school in the mid-to-late 2000s.
Though the exact amount Crow paid on behalf of Thomas' relative is unclear, ProPublica reported that the total could have surpassed $150,000, based on public records of the schools' tuition rates from that time. Thomas did not report the payments in his annual financial disclosures.
