Clarence Thomas’s “Son” Breaks Silence From Jail

The man Clarence Thomas said he once considered like a “son” now says that Thomas doesn’t want much to do with him.

Mark Martin, the grandson of Thomas’s sister Emma Mae Martin , spoke to Business Insider from a jail cell in South Carolina and said that the Supreme Court justice and his wife, Ginni, don’t have a relationship with him anymore, despite being his legal guardians from age 6 to 19.

Martin, who is awaiting trial on drug and weapons charges after he was arrested last summer, benefited from gifts Thomas received from conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, which the Supreme Court justice initially failed to include in financial disclosures.

“I haven’t really heard much from them in a long time,” Martin said of his adoptive parents. “I tried to communicate with them a couple of times, but I’ve never gotten any response.”

In 2007, Thomas said in an interview with C-Span that he and his wife were raising Martin, then 16, “ as a son .” Martin would attend military prep school Randolph-Macon Academy and Hidden Lake Academy, a residential therapeutic treatment center plagued by allegations of abuse , thanks to Crow, a Randolph-Macon alumnus, paying the tuition at both schools. Thomas did not report these payments on his financial statements.

“I guess they looked into Randolph-Macon Academy because Harlan Crow actually graduated from there, so I guess that was behind their decision to send me there—and then apparently he helped finance the HLA trip, too,” Martin told Business Insider, saying that he didn’t know at the time that Crow paid for his education.

ProPublica reported last year that Thomas had enjoyed luxury vacations on Crow’s dime almost every year, and Thomas failed to report those trips until just last week . In addition, the publication reported on Crow funding the renovation of the home where Thomas’s mother still lives as well as Martin’s private school tuition , estimating that the school fees likely exceeded $150,000.

Martin told Business Insider that he enjoyed a privileged childhood, traveling to more than 20 countries and spending summers wakeboarding or waterskiing. He also remembers babysitting Crow’s son when their families went on vacation together. But Martin said that when he began high school, Clarence and Ginni Thomas “just didn’t have time to deal with” him anymore and sent him away to boarding schools. After his freshman year of high school began, Martin said he rarely saw his great-uncle and great-aunt.

According to Martin, he was expelled from Randolph-Macon Academy after his junior year for failing a drug test, and he said the Thomases then sent him back to his mother’s house in Georgia. He said he has rarely heard from them since. Last year, Martin was arrested and charged with drug trafficking and weapons possession. According to Business Insider, Martin’s car was stopped as part of a juvenile-sex-trafficking investigation, but he doesn’t face any charges related to that.

Martin also faces charges pending from 2021 on allegedly trafficking meth and heroin, Business Insider reported, citing arrest records. Martin faces at least 25 years in prison over the drug charges and five more years for illegal gun possession.

“I actually don’t know if they know that I’m locked up—I’m not sure they’d care too much,” Martin said. “I’ve seen—I’ve probably seen them two times, maybe three times, over the last 14 years.”

“I just wish they’d at least communicate with me—get to know my children,” Martin added. “They raised me like another mother and father, so I wanted my children to know who raised me into the person that I became. I want them to be around for that, at least—to see my kids grow up.”

Thomas didn’t respond to Business Insider’s request for comment, but it’s not likely that he would have offered any acceptable justification for his and his wife’s treatment of someone they have referred to as a son. Thomas still refuses to speak about the unethical gifts he has received and adamantly refuses to resign from the Supreme Court despite all of his ethics scandals. Sadly, it seems that Martin’s life has been a casualty of Clarence and Ginni Thomas’s service to the conservative movement.