Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas are on luxury trips subsidized by Republican megadonors, according to a bombshell ProPublica report
The new bombshell report by ProPublica states Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, have gone on several luxury trips subsidized by Republican megadonors.
Thomas’ travel with the Crows, which included trips on the donor’s yacht and private jet, was the subject of a bombshell ProPublica report published Thursday. Some federal judges have come to the defense of the justices, and Congressional Democrats have called for an investigation into the matter.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said in a statement the ProPublica report was “a call to action” and that “the Senate Judiciary Committee will act.”
The report shows Thomas taking trips including to Indonesia, New Zealand, California and Texas. Some of these trips reportedly included travel on Crow’s super yacht or stays at properties owned by Crow or his company.
The Supreme Court and Crow did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment, and ProPublica says Thomas did not respond to a list of detailed questions.
Thomas, nominated by former President George H.W. Bush in 1991, is the senior-most justice on the court and an intellectual leader of the current 6-3 conservative majority. The justice has also been the subject of scrutiny for the political activities of his wife, including for texts she exchanged with key players in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
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Crow has contributed more than $10 million in publicly disclosed political contributions.
The ProPublica report documents a painting that hangs at the Crows’ Adirondacks property depicting Thomas, Crow and other influential figures in Republican politics, including Leonard Leo, the former Federalist Society head who played a crucial role in Trump’s makeover of the federal bench.
According to a report by ProPublica, heads of prominent conservative organizations as well as executives of major corporations have been in attendance on trips with Crow.
The Crow family gave a $19,000 bible to Thomas, which belonged to Frederick Douglass. ProPublica describes a portrait of the justice and his wife given to him by Crow as well as donation by Crow’s foundation of $105,000 for a “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund” at Yale Law School, where Thomas is an alumnus.
The report comes not long after the federal judiciary’s policy-making body quietly adjusted its interpretation of what justices are required to disclose as part of their gifts and hospitality transparency obligations.
According to some court ethics experts, the financial disclosure may have run afoul of the disclosure rules if Thomas had not taken the trips subsidized by Crow. Under the old guidance, there was some ambiguity about what requires disclosure. Recent changes have made it clear that disclosure was required for personal hospitality subsidized by third parties. That would appear to apply Thomas’ stays at the Adirondack property, because it was owned by Crow’s company, ProPublica said.
According to an email sent to CNN, Stephen Gillers, an ethics expert at New York University School of Law, said before the recent amendment to the disclosure guidance, Thomas did not need to state that he had received an invitation from a person other than a corporation.
But under the newly-announced changes, Gillers said, “some information and maybe all information about the trips” would have had to be disclosed. The reporting deadline is May 15 of the year following receipt of the gift.
Judges face much looser “hospitality” requirements than members of Congress, who are required to get approval for sponsored trips and who must report within 30 days the other guests and certain financial details about the hospitality, according to Gabe Roth – who leads Fix the Court, a group that advocates for ethics and transparency reforms for the judiciary.
The updates to the hospitality disclosure guidance was announced in late March by Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who had pressed the Administrative Office of the US Courts for clarification for what falls in the reporting exemption for so-called “personal hospitality.”
“Who were Thomas’s companions on these free undisclosed vacations, and what interests did those undisclosed companions have before the Court? Whitehouse said the question is obvious. It is the Chief Justices job to make sure that robust investigation occurs.
Justice Clarence Thomas said Friday that he did not disclose luxury travel paid for by a Republican donor because he was advised at the time that he did not have to report it.
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The controversy has cast a bright light on the judiciary that is increasingly called upon to resolve raging disputes between the political branches of government.
Critics claim that the court has become more political, since hot-button cases on abortion, gun rights and religious liberty have broken along conservative-liberal ideological lines.
The federal judges who serve on the lower courts are rarely heard from. If their names are not released, current and former federal judges will speak to CNN about internal matters outside the courtroom.
“This is precisely why the public respect for the Supreme Court has plummeted,” the judge said. “This is far greater than mere ethics violations. It’s about the perceived legitimacy of the Supreme Court.”
The nine justices who are on the highest court in the land are part of the federal court system judiciary.
Another also sided with Thomas, saying that they had actually been told on two occasions that they had shared more information than was necessary. “The Administrative Office of the United States Courts are concerned with consistency – they want the reports to look the same” the judge said.
The judge said he believed that the regulations concerning what constitutes personal hotel rooms did not seem to have been made clear until the new rules went into effect.
It was odd to think of a situation where you were spending social time with a close friend where at least occasionally some transportation wasn’t involved. Someone is going to be driving my friends where we’re going in the weekend.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/07/politics/clarence-thomas-disclosures-supreme-court/index.html
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The lower court judges must abide by a code of conduct but the justices aren’t binding themselves to it or making one for themselves. The source said that the lower court judges thought that the judiciary was being whitewashed because the justices won’t adopt a code of conduct.
Roberts did concede that the members of the high court “consult” the code of conduct as well as other materials including advice from the court’s legal office. He said that the court has no reason to adopt a code of conduct.
We’ve been friends with Harlan and Kathy Crow for 25 years. We have been travelling with them on family trips for more than 25 years.
I was advised that the kind of personal generosity from close friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable. I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.
“These guidelines are now being changed, as the committee of the Judicial Conference responsible for financial disclosure for the entire federal judiciary just this past month announced new guidance. I plan on following this guidance in the future.
The Myth America: What Happened to Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas in 1968 and Why the Future isn’t: A View from Zelizer
Julian Zelizer is a CNN political analyst and also a professor atPrinceton University. He is the author of 25 books, including the New York Times best-sellers, “Myth America” and “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lie and Legend About Our Past”. You can follow him on the micro-Blogging site. His own views are expressed in this commentary. CNN has more opinions on it.
Somewhere, the late Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas must be shaking his head, wondering how Thomas is getting away with all of this. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Fortas to be chief justice. Republicans and Southern Democrats used his acceptance of a $15,000 stipend from American University as an excuse to block his nomination. Fortas then withdrew his name from consideration. (Another charge later emerged that Fortas took a $20,000 retainer from a Wall Street financier, who was later imprisoned for securities violations. Fortas, who denied having done anything wrong, resigned from the Supreme Court in 1969).
In February, the American Bar Association threw its support behind the idea, warning that “the absence of a clearly articulated, binding code of ethics for the justices of the court imperils the legitimacy of the court.”
And just a few days ago, Senate Democrats — including Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen and Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse — tried to propose language in next year’s funding bill that would require the Supreme Court to create a transparent process for determining when recusals and ethics investigations were needed.
Van Hollen said that it was unacceptable that the Supreme Court had exemptions from accountability, and that congress should act to remedy the problem.
Numerous top Republicans, however, have opposed the plan or expressed their hesitations. In 2022, North Dakota Senator John Thune said he was not comfortable with the idea of being overly restrictive on Supreme Court Justices. They have pretty good instincts about when to and when not to re-enlist.