After ProPublica reported that Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas had failed to disclose two decades worth of luxury trips provided by billionaire conservative megadonor Harlan Crow, right-wing pundits and think tank staffers raced to defend Thomas and his benefactor — without mentioning what they all had in common: their own financial ties to Crow.

The episode is a reminder of how many conservative pundits and scholars owe their sinecures to the same billionaires who fund Republican election campaigns and efforts to influence the judiciary.

Hours after ProPublica dropped its report on Thomas, Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the right-wing think tank Manhattan Institute, tweeted, “Unless Harlan Crow has some business before the Court, the @propublica report about Justice Thomas is a big breathless nothingburger.”