Friend rips media's 'despicable' effort to 'smear' Clarence Thomas for GOP donors' payment to school

A close friend of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is speaking out against new allegations from a left-wing news outlet that GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow improperly paid for Thomas' great-nephew's private school tuition, and says those claims are "another attempt to manufacture a scandal."

A report published in a ProPublica Thursday revealed that Thomas' great-nephew, whom Thomas and his wife had taken into their care in 1997, had his tuition paid for by Crow at two private schools. The story says Crow paid for tuition for one year at Hidden Lake Academy in Georgia and one year at Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia.

Mark Paoletta, an attorney who served in the Trump and George W. Bush administrations and who is a close friend of the Thomas family, called the story "despicable."

"The Thomases love their great-nephew. It is despicable that the press has dragged him into their effort to smear Justice Thomas," Paoletta stated in a tweet Thursday.