“JUSTICE THOMAS: Well, there — see, he did not provide good counsel.”

The riddle is solved. From the Washington Post:

[T]he court released a new transcript Wednesday that contains the complete sentence:

“JUSTICE THOMAS: Well, there — see, he did not provide good counsel.”

The point remained the same. Thomas was tossing a lighthearted barb during a discussion about the qualifications of some of the attorneys representing murder suspect Jonathan Boyer.

One had attended Yale and one had attended Harvard. Thomas is a Yale Law grad who has been a frequent critic of his alma mater. On the other hand, he may have been making a crack about rival Harvard, because the lawyer from Cambridge was a man, and the New Haven graduate was a woman.

Maybe the joke was directed at the entire Ivy League, a favorite Thomas target. Every member of the high court attended Yale or Harvard, although Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg finished at Columbia.