Justice Clarence Thomas disclosed Thursday that Republican megadonor Harlan Crow paid for private jet trips for Thomas in 2022 to attend a speech in Texas and a vacation at Crow’s luxurious New York estate, as ethics questions continue to rock the Supreme Court.
In one instance, Thomas said he took the private transportation in May because of “increased security risk” following the leak of the Dobbs opinion overturning Roe v. Wade that had occurred a few days earlier.
Newly released financial disclosure forms Thursday also amend prior reports to include information that had been “inadvertently omitted” from past forms including a real estate deal between Thomas and Crow back in 2014.
Thomas made the disclosures after receiving an extension to file the yearly reports that were originally due in May 2023. Justice Samuel Alito released his financial disclosures Thursday as well.
The filing comes as Thomas has been under fire from critics who say he has skirted ethics laws for years by failing to properly disclose luxury trips, real estate transactions and other gifts bankrolled by wealthy friends.
A lawyer for Thomas released a statement and executive summary and said that there had been “no willful ethics transgressions” and that prior reporting errors were “strictly inadvertent.” The lawyer also refuted what he called a “partisan freezing frenzy” against the justice that he said amounted to “political blood sport.”
ProPublica was the first to report Thomas’ long-time friendship with Crow and the extent of their travel over the years. In a statement after the ProPublica report, Thomas acknowledged the friendship but stressed that Crow did not have business before the court. He said that he had not disclosed the years of travel because he was advised at the time that he did not have to report it. In the statement, he noted however, that the Judicial Conference had recently changed the rules. “It is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,” Thomas wrote.
The new change, which applies to activity covered by the 2023 report, makes clear that travel by private jets as well as stays in commercial properties are no longer considered a part of a hospitality exception.
Additional disclosures from Thomas includes real estate deal
Thomas also disclosed Thursday that he had “inadvertently omitted” other information in past reports including a life insurance policy for his spouse, conservative activist Virginia Thomas that had a cash value under $100,000 and a bank account valued at under $70,000 in 2018.
In addition, he said that he should have disclosed a 2014 private real estate deal between Crow, Thomas and members of Thomas’ family.
It involved the sale of three Georgia properties including the home where Thomas’ mother currently lives. The deal was not listed on his financial disclosure forms.
A source close to Thomas told CNN in April that Thomas initially believed he didn’t have to disclose because he lost money on the deal. The real estate deal was first reported by ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization.
The three properties in Savannah, Georgia, were owned by Thomas, his mother, Leola Williams, and his late brother’s family.
As a part of the negotiated sale price, Williams, who was 85 at the time of the deal, was given an occupancy agreement to be able to live in the home for the rest of her life, the source said. She lives rent free but is responsible for paying the property taxes and insurance.
Section VII of the financial disclosure form clearly indicates, however, that a “transaction” needs to be listed irrespective if there was a loss.
Crow-paid travel
As for the travel that Crow paid for in 2022, it included a private jet for Thomas who gave a talk at the Old Parkland Conference sponsored by the Hoover Institution, the Manhattan Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. The event – an assembly of scholars and lawyers – was billed as a gathering to explore alternative solutions to the economic and social advancement of Black Americans. The conference was held at a building owned by Crow Holdings.
According to the disclosure, the event Thomas flew down to be the key note speaker in February, but returned via private jet “due to an unexpected ice storm.”
The talk was rescheduled in May and Thomas rode round trip on Crow’s plane. In the financial disclosure form Thomas notes that “because of increased security risk following the Dobbs opinion leak, the May flights were by private plane for official travel as filer’s security detail recommended noncommerical travel whenever possible.”
In addition, in July, Thomas traveled to Crow’s private Adirondack resort for vacation.
An attorney for Thomas, Elliot S. Berke, released a statement Thursday saying that Thomas “has always strived for full transparency and adherence to the law.” He noted that after new guidance was issued by the Judicial Conference in March, Thomas received an extension.
He also referenced ethics complaints that have been filed against Thomas by “left wing” organizations . “We look forward to answering any additional questions or addressing any remaining issues,” he said for “sensationalized allegations.”
The new reports are likely to fuel key Senate Democrats who are pushing for legislation that would implement a series of ethics and transparency reforms at the Supreme Court including a code of ethics directed at the justices themselves. Although the justices have discussed amongst themselves whether they should commit to an ethics code aimed specifically at the high court, they have yet to come to a consensus.
Justice Elena Kagan confirmed in an appearance in late July that the justices have been discussing possible reforms, although they have not yet reached an agreement on whether to move forward with a formal code.
For his part, Alito told The Wall Street Journal in July that Congress should stop trying to impose ethics rules on the high court.
“No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court – period,” Alito said in the interview.
As things stand, public approval ratings of the court have held steady at historic lows.
Alito acknowledges paid trip to Rome
Alito also released his 2022 financial disclosure forms on Thursday after receiving an extension from the May 15 deadline.
Alito’s 13-page report confirms reporting by CNN earlier this year that a trip the justice took to Rome in 2022 to give a keynote speech to Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative was paid for by the conservative group. The initiative’s legal clinic has filed a series of “friend-of-the-court” briefs in religious liberty cases before the Supreme Court since its founding in 2020.
Though the report doesn’t detail how much the trip to Rome cost, it notes that the law school covered Alito’s transportation, lodging and meals so he could speak at the Religious Liberty Summit.
The forms also note that Alito was paid to teach courses at two law schools: Regent University School of Law and Duke Law School. For the Regent gig, the justice was paid $9,000, according to the disclosure, while Duke paid him $20,250 for a pair of teaching jobs. The school also covered Alito’s lodging and meals.
As things stand, public approval ratings of the court have held steady at historic lows.
The damage from Fascist 45 has been tremendous, but at least the people are taking notice. And hopefully this will inspire positive change.
Our parents and teachers grew up under the Warren and Marshall courts.
These were hardly all good, but they were a rare time of stability, sanity, and defense of civil rights out of the courts. Which is a blip in the history.
On the whole, the SCOTUS has always been a force for evil. It has always leaned against civil rights and towards statism and fascism. Towards maintaining and enforcing the police state. The current state is returning to the norm, not an anomaly. But with so many of society’s elders being raised on a reasonable court, they forget.
It is a 100% politically-appointed institution with zero oversight and lifetime terms. It’s obviously a bad idea. Just another of myriad compromises in the founding of our nation to cater to regressive-thinking, anti-civil rights right wingers that have always been a major part of the American experiment.
Everyone should read Balls and Strikes and listen to the 5-4 Podcast. Especially the fucking law school professors that uncritically and dogmatically teach the mostly very, very bad SCOTUS case law. We need to get serious about fixing this bad institution if we want to have a future.
Zero people in my life who didn’t already notice years ago have noticed since. Not very encouraging.
Well that’s just great. Now how do we walk back all the cases he weighed in on when he should have actually recused himself?
He’s such a sleeze bag. Wish Anita Hill could’ve kept him off the bench.
SCOTUS is damaged for years & years to come. (ﾉ´･ω･)ﾉ ﾐ ┻━┻
And she was victimized because of this piece of judicial shit. Such a travesty, but unfortunately no surprise.
And yet a doctor can’t receive a pen from a pharmaceutical rep because of ethics. Amazing that these other professionals can’t simply do whatever they want.
C O R R U PT
There are many reasons that George H.W. Bush chose to nominate Thomas, but one of them is almost surely that Thomas is black. The seat Thomas was nominated to fill was the one left by Thurgood Marshall, who retired in declining health.
Justice Thurgood Marshall was a consistent liberal vote and a strong proponent of civil rights protections. Before becoming a Justice himself, Marshall argued dozens of civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education. Marshall’s “sliding-scale” situation-informed style would seem to be in direct conflict with Thomas’s unyielding “textual originalism.”
I was in my early 20s that summer when the Clarence Thomas confirmation, and Anita Hill’s testimony, were everywhere on the news. I even remember it in an episode of the sitcom Designing Women, albeit in a plausibly deniable “bothsides” kind of way. The story raged because of its high stakes and titillating content, but it also prompted some frank. worthwhile discussion about some uncomfortable topics.
And then Thomas publicly complained that the sexual harassment complaints against him amounted to a “high-tech lynching.” And then, slowly but surely, we all came to understand it was pretty much over.
“He played the race card,” his detractors complained. But his supporters answered, weren’t those detractors playing the race card too? What if the real racist is the person who automatically assumes the word “lynching” was intended to be taken in a race-related context in the first place?
It went back and forth like that for a while, as the public spotlight on the story faded out. But we weren’t talking about Anita Hill’s testimony anymore. We weren’t even talking about Thomas’s suitability as a Supreme Court Justice anymore. It was pretty much all “race card” stuff from there on out.
There are many, many reasons that GHWB nominated Thomas. At least one of them is that Thomas is black, and that it would have been a bad look (politically and otherwise) to nominate someone who was not black to replace Marshall.
Thomas is black. That gives him the right to “play the race card,” as far as I’m concerned. But fair play calls for laying your cards on the table, for everyone to see. Thomas has always cared more about the cards he keeps up his sleeve.
This country is a joke 🤣
Briber you mean.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In one instance, Thomas said he took the private transportation in May because of “increased security risk” following the leak of the Dobbs opinion overturning Roe v. Wade that had occurred a few days earlier.
The filing comes as Thomas has been under fire from critics who say he has skirted ethics laws for years by failing to properly disclose luxury trips, real estate transactions and other gifts bankrolled by wealthy friends.
The new change, which applies to activity covered by the 2023 report, makes clear that travel by private jets as well as stays in commercial properties are no longer considered a part of a hospitality exception.
The event – an assembly of scholars and lawyers – was billed as a gathering to explore alternative solutions to the economic and social advancement of Black Americans.
According to the disclosure, the event Thomas flew down to be the key note speaker in February, but returned via private jet “due to an unexpected ice storm.”
Though the report doesn’t detail how much the trip to Rome cost, it notes that the law school covered Alito’s transportation, lodging and meals so he could speak at the Religious Liberty Summit.
The original article contains 1,178 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
