Stench

The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America

By: David Brock

Narrated by: David Brock, Sean Patrick Hopkins

Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

A blistering exposé of Clarence Thomas and the conservative regime of corruption that has usurped the Supreme Court—by a Democratic activist and former Republican political operative

Public confidence in the Supreme Court has plummeted to new lows in the last few years—and for good reason. In the past three decades, six conservative justices have gained a supermajority through questionable means: a dubious intervention in a presidential election, perjury during Senate testimony, and a GOP Senate Leader’s unethical blockade of a Supreme Court nomination. Behind this strategic dismantling of our Supreme Court is a vast, well-funded political machine—backed by the extreme right-wing Federalist Society, the notoriously secretive Catholic organization Opus Dei, and GOP megadonors operating from behind closed doors.

Armed with an insider’s perspective from his time within the conservative movement, David Brock reveals how the efforts to stack the Court in service of extreme right-wing interests stem from a decades-long strategy to weaponize our judicial system into an extension of the Republican Party itself. Stench investigates the ethics scandals that surround Clarence Thomas and his wife, the right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, culling new material from Thomas’s accusers, along with original reporting and Brock’s firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of the GOP. Stench is a staggering exposé, one that only Brock could write—exhaustive in its research and revelatory in its access to the world of what has effectively become the Thomas Court.

©2024 David Brock (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"A full-throated denunciation of a corrupt, thoroughly politicized Supreme Court in which the true chief justice is Clarence Thomas. . . . The Court, writes Brock, became Thomas’s the minute Amy Coney Barrett took Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat on the bench in 2020. . . . Critics of the current Supreme Court will find plenty of support in Brock’s aggrieved, well-documented exposé."—Kirkus Reviews

"David Brock's new book Stench captures one of the most consequential elements of the crisis facing the American Republic: a Supreme Court fully invested in an activist approach to the law and the Constitution. He shows clearly how the Long March of the Federalist Society and conservative activists was designed as a multi-decade program to deliver political, not simply legal, outcomes for the American right. The right campaigned for decades against "activist courts" and "legislating from the bench" but it turned out that was their real plan all along. Stench is a road map on how they did it, what comes next, and the consequences for us all."–Rick Wilson

"As David Brock shows in this deeply researched, compelling account, far-right fanatics backed by corporate interests schemed for more than 40 years to capture America’s judiciary with far-reaching consequences for women’s reproductive health, voting rights, sensible gun laws and a clean environment. But the battle isn’t over. The courts are on the ballot again in November. At stake are life-time appointments of ever younger extremists, from the Supreme Court on down, who will lock in for generations their radical, distorted and deeply unpopular views of the Constitution. Brock sounds the alarm. Don’t say you weren’t warned."—James Carville