“He said, ‘I think you should sit next to me,’ giving me squeezes," Moira Smith said of Justice Clarence Thomas. | AP Photo Woman accuses Clarence Thomas of groping her at a dinner party in 1999

A woman is accusing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of having groped her in 1999.

According to a report published Thursday by the National Law Journal/Law.com, Moira Smith, 41, alleged that Thomas repeatedly squeezed her butt during a dinner nearly 20 years ago.


Smith, vice president and general counsel at Enstar Natural Gas Co. in Alaska, was a Truman Foundation scholar helping Louis Blair, who directed the foundation at the time, prepare for a dinner at Blair’s home in Falls Church, Virginia, with Thomas and David Adkins as the featured guests. Thomas was to present Adkins, then a Kansas state lawmaker as well as a former Truman scholar, an award at the Supreme Court the following day.

Smith posted details about the encounter on Facebook the night a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video emerged in which now-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was caught talking cavalierly about forcibly kissing and groping women with impunity because he’s “a star.”

“At the age of 24, I found out I’d be attending a dinner at my boss’s house with Justice Clarence Thomas,” Smith wrote in the post, which was initially private, then made public but no longer exists since she deactivated her account about 10 days later. “I was so incredibly excited to meet him, rough confirmation hearings notwithstanding. He was charming in many ways—giant, booming laugh, charismatic, approachable.”

“But to my complete shock, he groped me while I was setting the table, suggesting I should sit ‘right next to him,’” she continued. “When I feebly explained that I’d been assigned to the other table, he groped again…’are you *sure*??’ I said I was and proceeded to keep my distance.”

In a series of interviews conducted over two weeks since her post was published, Smith recalled setting the table to Thomas’ right while the two were alone “when he reached out, sort of cupped his hand around my butt and pulled me pretty close to him.” Thomas asked her where she was sitting “and gave me a squeeze,” she added.

“He said, ‘I think you should sit next to me,’ giving me squeezes. I said, ‘Well, Mr. Blair is pretty particular about his seating chart,’” she told NLJ. “I tried to use the seating chart as a pretext for refusing. He one more time squeezed my butt and he said, ‘Are you sure?’ I said yes, and that was the end of it.”

Thomas, who was accused in testimony during his Senate confirmation hearings by Anita Hill of sexually harassing her when she worked for him at the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, dismissed the allegations in a statement to NLJ through his spokeswoman. “This claim is preposterous and it never happened,” he said.

Thomas’ office didn’t immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

Carrie Severino, who clerked for Thomas in 2007 and 2008, described him on Thursday as a role model and mentor who treated his clerks “with the utmost respect.” Thomas, she said, is seen as “a good and honest man” who is also “worthy and admirable.”

“So I was shocked when I heard that the National Law Journal is reporting allegations of seventeen-year-old misconduct this week. The alleged conduct bears no resemblance to the man I worked closely with, whom I still count a friend after nearly ten years,” she wrote in National Review. “These implausible allegations come from a partisan Democrat who is married to a partisan Democrat who previously withdrew from a political race after his own campaign was mired in allegations of dirty tricks. I give them no credit whatsoever.”

Smith concluded her Facebook post, which included additional revelations that she was date raped in college, “accosted in a bar and groped by an acquaintance,” by remarking that she was speaking out not because of the presidential election or Trump but because, “Enough is enough.”

“Donald Trump said when you’re a star, they let you do it; you can do anything. The idea that we as victims let them do it made me mad,” she told NLJ, explaining why she went public. “Sure enough, Justice Thomas did it with I think an implicit pact of silence that I would be so flattered and star-struck and surprised that I wouldn’t say anything. I played the chump. I didn’t say anything.”

She suggested she didn’t speak up at the time because while she was “shell-shocked,” she was “also there for work” and “had a job to do.” Smith posed with Thomas for a picture after the dinner but said she was “conflicted” about it.

“On the one hand, I really liked Justice Thomas,” she said. “He was clearly smart, engaging, and hilarious—he had a booming and totally infectious laugh. On the other hand, I was so confused about what had happened. It had transgressed such a line.”

While recalling the “spectacularly successful” dinner “fondly,” Blair said he had “no recollection of the incident.” He expressed skepticism that Smith and Thomas could have been alone, given that there were maybe 16 people in three rooms. But he conceded that he spent most of the night in the kitchen “so I wouldn’t have seen it.”

Smith’s roommates at the time and future husband helped corroborate her story. Her three roommates remembered having a discussion about Thomas allegedly groping her, and the man she would later marry said he “definitely remembered” her sharing that story with him soon after it happened.

In additional posts to National Review, Severino indicated that Smith’s claim is a partisan attack on the conservative justice, noting that Smith has been a registered Democrat in Alaska for decades, her first husband served in President Barack Obama’s White House and her second husband “is now a discredited high-profile Democratic politician in Alaska” who withdrew from a primary race after his campaign was found creating fake web sites that attacked one of his Democratic challengers.

She also dismissed Smith’s corroborators as “Democratic hacks” who “tepidly” backed her story but stressed there were no witnesses. “Think about that for a moment,” she said.

Smith said people know that “many men in power take advantage of vulnerable women,” adding that such willingness “relies on an unspoken pact that the women will not speak up about it.”

“Why? Because they are vulnerable,” Smith said. “Because they are star-struck. Because they don’t want to be whiners. Because they worry about their career if they do speak out. But silence no longer feels defensible; it feels complicit.”

“I don’t gain anything but what I stand to lose is relatively minor compared to people in less stable situations,” she added. “That gives me a feeling of obligation, responsibility. If I can, I should.”