Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, shown at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., in 2012, said of Moira Smith’s groping allegation: “This claim is preposterous and it never happened.” (Michael Dwyer/AP) 
 
 The 25th anniversary of Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court has featured testimonials from his supporters, a symposium on his jurisprudence and tributes from conservative legal scholars about his influence on the court. 
 
 But Thursday brought an unwelcome echo of the sexual harassment allegations that almost derailed his 1991 nomination: An Alaska lawyer told the National Law Journal that Thomas groped her at a dinner party in 1999, when she was a young Truman Foundation scholar in Washington. 
 
 Through a court spokeswoman, Thomas told the publication: “This claim is preposterous and it never happened.” 
 
 The woman, Moira Smith, said she decided to make the allegations not because of Thomas but because of Donald Trump. She posted the information on her Facebook page on Oct. 7, hours after the media disclosed that Trump had boasted on tape about grabbing women. 
 
 “When Justice Thomas touched me inappropriately and without my consent, I was 23 years old — and felt there was nothing I could do,” Smith said in a statement released Wednesday. “Seventeen years later, it is clear that sexual harassment, misconduct and assault continue to be pervasive, having an impact on all women. I choose to speak out now in the hope that this will change.” 
 
 Smith said she was helping her boss at the dinner party when the incident occurred. Guests contacted by the National Law Journal said they saw nothing untoward. Smith, who posed for a photo with the justice later that night, did not tell them Thomas had grabbed her buttocks. 
 
 But friends said Smith told them about the alleged groping that same night and the next morning, and they were not surprised when Smith again recounted the incident earlier this month. 
 
 “I don’t remember the specific timeline,” Amy Hertel Buckley, 39, another Truman scholar at the dinner that night, told The Washington Post. “But when I saw her Facebook post, it was instantly familiar to me. It’s been a long time, but she definitely told me about that after it happened.” 
 
 Marcia Coyle, the longtime Supreme Court reporter who wrote the story, said Smith did not come forward. Smith initially made her Facebook posting private so that only friends could see it, Coyle said. Smith made it public after friends told her she should. 
 
 A source told Coyle about the posting — Smith’s Facebook account has now been deactivated — and Coyle interviewed her and others who corroborated her account over a two-week period, according to the NLJ report. 
 
 The dinner party was held at the Falls Church, Va., home of Louis Blair, then head of the Truman Foundation. It was a scholarship program founded by Congress to identify students “who demonstrate outstanding potential for and who plan to pursue a career in public service.” 
 
 Smith, now the vice president and general counsel of Enstar Natural Gas Co. in Alaska, was a resident scholar who assisted Blair. Her unofficial duties involved helping coordinate events such as the dinner, which preceded another event at which Thomas was to give an award named for a judge he knew. Buckley said she also helped out at the dinner. 
 
 Smith told the National Law Journal: “I was setting the place to his right when he reached out, sort of cupped his hand around my butt and pulled me pretty close to him. He said, ‘Where are you sitting?’ and gave me a squeeze. I said, ‘I’m sitting down at the garden table.’ He said, ‘I think you should sit next to me,’ giving me squeezes.” 
 
 Smith said she was “so confused about what happened” because she liked Thomas but also felt he “had transgressed such a line.” 
 
 The NLJ report said “her three former housemates during the spring and summer of 1999 each said in interviews they remembered Smith describing inappropriate contact by Thomas after she came home that night from the dinner or early the next morning.” 
 
 In her Facebook post, Smith said she had been the victim of date rape in college, and also groped by an acquaintance. After hearing the Trump tape, she said, she decided “enough is enough.” 
 
 She also told the NLJ: “We now know that many men in power take advantage of vulnerable women. That willingness by men in power to take advantage of vulnerable women relies on an unspoken pact that the women will not speak up about it. Why? Because they are vulnerable. 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.” 
 
 [‘It was just awful’: The Clarence Thomas hearings, in the words of those who were there] 
 
 Thomas’s supporters rallied quickly to his defense, saying the charges were part of an unrelenting attack on the conservative justice. Some tied Smith to Democratic activists and noted that her husband is a former Democratic party official. 
 
 “The alleged conduct bears no resemblance to the man I worked closely with, whom I still count a friend after nearly 10 years,” Carrie Severino, a former Thomas clerk, wrote on the National Review website. “Those of us who have known the justice or worked with him in any capacity . . . including those who disagree with him, recognize him to be a good and honest man.” 
 
 Mark Paoletta, a former assistant White House counsel who worked on Thomas’s confirmation, questioned the timing. “I do not consider it a coincidence that this Democratic smear on Justice Thomas comes as he celebrates 25 years on the court, and in the heat of a presidential election.” 
 
 [For Anita Hill, the Clarence Thomas hearings haven’t really ended] 
 
 Severino and Paoletta noted that Smith in the past has supported Democrats, and that a former husband worked in the Obama White House. One of the friends who confirmed Smith’s story is a political consultant who works with Democrats. 
 
 In her statement, Smith said she was motivated by her children. “As the mother of a young daughter and son, I am coming forward to show that it is important to stand up for yourself and tell the truth,” she said. 
 
 Thomas spoke Wednesday during his remarks at the Heritage Foundation about his own confirmation hearings, marked by the allegations of Anita Hill that he verbally harassed her, and about other confirmation hearings since. 
 
 “The city is broken in some ways,” Thomas said, adding, “at some point, we have got to recognize that we’re destroying our institutions.” 
 
 Julie Tate contributed to this report. ||||| Photo 
 
 WASHINGTON — An Alaska lawyer has accused Justice Clarence Thomas of groping her at a dinner party in 1999, a claim that Justice Thomas called “preposterous.” 
 
 The lawyer, Moira Smith, who was a 23-year-old Truman Foundation scholar at the time, told The National Law Journal that Justice Thomas had “sort of cupped his hand around my butt and pulled me pretty close to him” as she was making final preparations for the party, in a Washington suburb. 
 
 Justice Thomas, continuing to squeeze her buttocks, urged her to sit next to him at the dinner, Ms. Smith said. She declined. He asked if she was sure, Ms. Smith recalled. “I said yes, and that was the end of it,” she said. 
 
 Through a court spokeswoman, Justice Thomas told The National Law Journal that the episode “never happened.” The spokeswoman, Kathleen L. Arberg, said she had nothing to add to that statement. 
 
 Justice Thomas, 68, took his seat on the court 25 years ago after a searing confirmation battle that also featured accusations of sexual harassment. 
 
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 Ms. Smith, who is now general counsel of Enstar Natural Gas, declined a request for an interview. But in a statement, she said that while she had felt powerless at the time of the groping, “17 years later, it is clear that sexual harassment, misconduct and assault continue to be pervasive, having an impact on all women.” She added, “I choose to speak out now in the hope that this will change.” 
 
 In the National Law Journal article, Ms. Smith said her public accusation was prompted by the disclosure this month of a 2005 recording in which Donald J. Trump boasted about kissing women without their consent and groping them. 
 
 She said she might have been flattered by the attention of a Supreme Court justice had he not been so aggressive. “But it felt somewhat menacing, and I felt vulnerable,” she told Marcia Coyle, a reporter. 
 
 Three of Ms. Smith’s former housemates and her ex-husband said Ms. Smith had told them about the episode soon after it happened, according to The National Law Journal. But several guests at the dinner — held by the head of the Truman Foundation, which awards scholarships to young people who plan to pursue a career in public service — said they had no recollection of any inappropriate behavior. 
 
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 In Justice Thomas’s confirmation hearing in 1991, Anita Hill, a law professor who had worked for Justice Thomas before he became a judge, said he had tried to date her, used sexual innuendo and described pornographic movies in vivid detail. 
 
 Justice Thomas, then a federal appeals court judge, responded to the accusations with fury. “This is a circus,” he said. “It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching.” 
 
 The new accusation is not plausible, said Carrie Severino, a former law clerk to Justice Thomas. 
 
 “A justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was the guest of honor at a tiny event, surely attracting the sort of swarm the justices tend to attract, yet not a single witness can corroborate Smith’s outlandish story,” Ms. Severino said. 
 
 Mark Paoletta, who worked in the White House Counsel’s Office during Justice Thomas’s confirmation hearings, said the accusations were motivated by politics. 
 
 “Justice Thomas has hired more than 30 women law clerks over the years, has worked closely with them day in and day out, and none of them has ever accused him of any inappropriate conduct,” he said. “In fact, they hold him in the highest regard. I do not consider it a coincidence that this Democratic smear on Justice Thomas comes as he celebrates 25 years on the court, and in the heat of a presidential election.” 
 
 On Wednesday, after hearing of Ms. Smith’s accusations but before they were made public, Justice Thomas was interviewed at the Heritage Foundation. He was generally upbeat and expansive, but he turned serious when asked about his confirmation hearings. 
 
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 “I think that we have decided that rather than confront the disagreements and the differences of opinion, we’ll simply annihilate the person who disagrees with us,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to work in a republic, in a civil society.”
– Another accuser says she decided to come forward because of Donald Trump's remarks about woman—but she's accusing Clarence Thomas, not Trump, of groping her. Alaska lawyer Moira Smith says she was a 23-year-old Truman Foundation scholar in Washington when the Supreme Court justice touched her inappropriately at a dinner party in 1999, the Washington Post reports. "I was setting the place to his right when he reached out, sort of cupped his hand around my butt and pulled me pretty close to him," Smith tells the National Law Journal. "He said, 'Where are you sitting?' and gave me a squeeze. I said, 'I'm sitting down at the garden table.' He said, 'I think you should sit next to me,' giving me squeezes." Smith—whose former roommates tell the Journal they remember her talking about the incident—says she felt powerless to do anything at the time but is coming forward now because "sexual harassment, misconduct, and assault continue to be pervasive," the New York Times reports. Anita Hill's accusation of sexual harassment almost cost Thomas his Supreme Court confirmation, which was 25 years ago this week, the Post notes. His supporters described Smith's accusations as a politically motivated attack. Through a spokeswoman, Thomas told the Journal: "This claim is preposterous and it never happened."