-by By Andrew Kreig

November 9, 2011- GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain describes himself as a victim of a "high-tech lynching" — not a playboy chasing women on his staff, as four have claimed, most recently on Nov. 7. Cain’s “lynching” defense is modeled on the one his friend, Clarence Thomas, used so effectively in 1991 to deflect sexual harassment charges from Anita Hill and thereby win a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. Cain's "lynching" ad has helped him raise $1.2 million in the past week, he told CNN, and helped Cain buttress his support among conservatives and provided a rationale for blacks to rally around him.

But Cain has a larger problem, aside from Sharon Bialek, a fourth accuser who just surfaced:

Clarence Thomas perjured himself when he used the slogan to defend himself in his 1991 Senate testimony, according to evidence that I've been writing about for the Justice Integrity Project. Thomas Must Resign, Says Former Judge, Lover is among my columns. Beyond the sex allegations, the parallels threaten to tarnish Cain with financial misconduct claims against Thomas — who is the subject of a current effort to force his resignation, his federal prosecution and his impeachment for financial crimes relating to the kinds of billionaire backers who are now supporting Cain. Thus, Cain's efforts to save himself by playing the "lynching" race card has the unintended consequence of linking the two friends and their financial backers at a bad time.

Forty-six House Democrats last month called for a House impeachment probe of Thomas. A week earlier, 20 of them had called for an FBI probe for false statement and bribery regarding more than $1.6 million in gifts and household income that Thomas failed to report in recent years, as required by law. Most of the money went to his wife, Virginia, a longtime conservative policy advocate. She sought to parlay the Supreme Court's 5-4 Citizen's United decision into a big-time salary to use the new wide-open election laws that her husband helped create to void key financial restrictions on corporations and unions, thereby allowing them to reshape American politics.

On Oct. 25, a progressive group called Protect Our Elections headlined an ad, Clarence and Virginia Thomas…Bought by Billionaires:

The explanatory text for the ad begins:

Virginia, Harlan, Clarence and David have been having a good laugh at our expense. How much longer will we let this go on? America’s citizens have had it with people in power who violate the law. That includes Clarence Thomas, who has used his position as a Supreme Court Justice to flout the law and enrich himself, his wife and their cronies through corrupt backroom deals with billionaires Harlan Crow, and Charles and David Koch.

Crow is portrayed in the ad above as between the Thomas couple, with David Koch at right. Virginia Thomas obtained $500,000 in November 2009 from real estate mogul Harlan Crow, according to documents now public. The documents show that promptly after the Supreme Court announced its Citizens United decision in January 2010 she created Liberty Central, a 501 (c-4) organization that would pay her $495,000 in salary to lead a group that would help corporations perform effectively under the wide-open election system the court put in place nationally.

The Protect Our Elections group posted a 12-page, single-space summary of false statement and bribery evidence against Clarence and Virginia Thomas, which it says it sent to the FBI in July as part of an ongoing dialogue with the FBI and members of Congress. Kevin Zeese, counsel for Protect Our Elections.org and an affiliated group, Accountability in Justice, says prosecuting Clarence Thomas should be the top priority for anyone concerned about ethics in government because Thomas is "corrupter No. 1" among all of the nation's high-level government officials in terms of documented evidence of crime. For months, Zeese has also been one of the main organizers preparing for an Occupy Wall Street offshoot now located at Freedom Plaza near the White House. He says the Freedom Plaza protests resulting in 19 arrests Oct. 15 at the Supreme Court are just the beginning of its campaign against Thomas and his court colleagues who fail to provide oversight against internal lawbreaking and corrupt rulings.

Kathleen Arberg, the court spokeswoman, told Huffington Post reporter Jennifer Bendery that the Thomas omissions on his disclosure forms were "inadvertent," as Bendery reported in Democrats Ramp Up Calls For Ethics Probe Of Clarence Thomas. Thomas declines comment, as does his friend and benefactor Crow, heir to the Trammell Crow real estate fortune and an active advocate for extreme right-wing causes and donations benefiting the Thomas family and legacy. But Politico reported Thomas to have told a February meeting of conservative supporters at Liberty University closed to the media that he and his wife will continue to fight for liberty despite attacks, as described here: Defiant Clarence Thomas fires back. Arberg, Thomas, Crow and the Koch brothers have failed to respond to my requests to them for comment.

New Evidence on the Thomas Porno Denial

Most recently, author and retired federal judge Lillian McEwen, herself a counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee during the 1980s, told me that Thomas repeatedly described porno actor Long Dong Silver to her during their five years of dating in the early 1980s. This was the same porno star — obscure, if not unknown in most circles — that Hill swore typified the sex-related harassment that Thomas initiated with her. This was at a time when Thomas chaired the Reagan Administration’s Equal Opportunity Employment Commission overseeing sex and other job bias complaints throughout the nation. Also, Thomas supervised Hill and was dating McEwen, at right.in a photo illustrating her book this year.

During the Thomas confirmation hearing in 1991, Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans viciously attacked Hill. Democrats, including then-chairman Joe Biden, generally let their GOP colleagues pump up Thomas and denounce Hill. But Hill’s evidence on the pornography point has since been buttressed by McEwen on my radio show Sept. 22 and at the National Press Club Oct. 26, as well as by other witnesses that the Senate Judiciary Committee refused to call in person. I attended the 1991 hearings and have read 10 relevant books, including a transcript of the hearings, the Thomas autobiography and David Brock's The Real Anita Hill, an attack book on Hill that the author has largely renounced as misguided.

Thomas denied Hill’s porno claims specifically and linked them closely to his overall piety and his race-based defense. But my reading of the evidence shows that he clearly perjured himself to win his lifetime Supreme Court appointment by a 52-48 Senate vote.

FULL STORY HERE:

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