Asked about the event, Clemson spokesman Joe Galbraith told the AP in a statement that the event was not a fundraiser and that there were no “solicitations of donations requested in association with the visit.”
Starr’s widow, Alice, defended the practice on the grounds that requests for donations were separate from the visit, though wealthy targets of the university’s fundraising efforts were invited. FILE - Former Baylor University president Ken Starr, left, introduces Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, right, to a crowd at McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas, Sept. 7, 2017.
The day after the dinner, Thomas attended a more intimate meal with several school officials, the Starrs, Robinson, and a half-dozen other guests. The college declined to identify those people, citing guidance from the Texas attorney general’s office that allows higher education institutions to withhold donors’ names.
The school arranged for its athletic association’s private Embraer Phenom 300 jet to fly to Washington to ferry Thomas and his former law clerk Kathryn Mizelle,. In a statement, a university spokeswoman called the chartered flight “standard practice” for many invited speakers “for whom air travel is necessary.”
Thomas and Mizelle, a 2012 graduate of the law school, extended their stay into the weekend to attend a gathering of a Florida branch of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group whose deep-pocketed donors have helped orchestrateIn a crowded ballroom at a Disney World resort, tributes for Thomas were effusive. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who helped introduce Thomas and is now pursuing the Republican presidential nomination, called him the “greatest living justice.