Thiel spoke glowingly of Trump at the GOP Convention in July, was an early Trump supporter, and was the first person ever at a GOP convention to declare from the stage that he is gay.
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There is now one vacancy on the Supreme Court after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February.
All parties are denying a Huffington Post report that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump plans on nominating Thiel to fill the current vacant seat on the Supreme Court, according to Business Insider.
“Peter hasn’t had any conversations about a Supreme Court nomination and has no interest in the job”, Thiel’s spokesman, Jeremiah Hill, added.
Then again, that second source “has not spoken to Trump directly about Thiel being nominated to the Court”, and reminded the Huffington Post that “Trump’s offers often fail to materialize in real life”. Another source told the publication that Trump’s inner circle has discussed the possibility of Thiel as a SCOTUS nominee. In a recent Washington Post column, the scholar Oren Kerr explored what a Trump Justice Department would look like, expressing alarm at the potential of Trump using U.S. Attorneys to attack his personal political opponents.
Trump’s spokesperson Hope Hicks also attempted to pour cold water on the speculation.
Thiel is a venture capitalist who co-founded the CIA-backed data-mining firm Palantir in addition to PayPal.
The 48-year-old entrepreneur graduated from Stanford Law School and worked for a top law firm in NY for almost a year. If nominated and confirmed, he would be the first openly gay member of the Court.
But if it turns out there is no truth to the Thiel rumor (which appears likely), it still raises the question as to who who Trump would appoint to the Supreme Court instead.
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However, the Thiel story conflicts so strikingly with Huffington Post’s characterization of Trump as a bigot, that one has to wonder if the website is blowing smoke or if the smoke comes with actual fire.
