Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas hit with new financial disclosure allegations
2023/04/17
2023/04/17
United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas poses for an official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on Oct. 7, 2022, in Washington, DC. - Alex Wong/Getty Images North America/TNS
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was hit with new financial disclosure allegations as reports Monday said he plans to resubmit previous forms that omitted property sales to a GOP mega donor.
In the latest ethics blow for the conservative jurist, Thomas reportedly has claimed that he was paid between $50,000 and $100,000 annually by a Nebraska real estate company set up by his controversial wife, Ginni Thomas.
But the company went out of business in 2006, the Washington Post reported. It was replaced by a new company that took over its land-leasing business, but Clarence Thomas continued to report income from the previous company.
The new allegation came as Thomas reportedly has told associates he will file amended disclosure forms to cover blockbuster revelations in recent days about his financial ties to billionaire Republican mega donor Harlan Crow, CNN reported Monday.
Thomas failed to report sales of three properties, including his elderly mother’s home in Savannah, Ga., to Crow a decade ago. As previously revealed, the judge also failed to report that Crow paid for the Thomases’ lavish vacations, including a $500,000 private plane-and-yacht junket to Indonesia.
Crow, a Texas real estate magnate, denounced the reports Monday as “a political hit job” in an interview with the Dallas Morning News.
Thomas last put out a rare statement claiming he had been told the vacations weremere “personal hospitality” that did not need to be reported to the IRS.
He has not responded to reports about the property sales. Federal law require judges and other officials to disclose all property sales except for homes that they live in.
Congressional Democrats have demanded investigations into the allegations against Thomas, whom they portray as a serial violator of ethics rules.
“There is at least reasonable cause to believe that Justice Thomas intentionally disregarded the disclosure requirement to report the sale of his interest in the Savannah properties in an attempt to hide the extent of his financial relationship with Crow,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said in a joint statement.
They want Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to launch an investigation and have asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to look into whether Thomas violated federal ethics laws.
The lapses have shined a spotlight on the virtually nonexistent oversight of Supreme Court justices, who mostly are left to police their own behavior.
Aside from his disclosure failings, Thomas has refused to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election even though his wife is a prominent ally of former President Donald Trump who pushed for him to overturn President Joe Biden’s win.
He was the lone dissenter in an 8-1 decision that forced the handover to the congressional Jan. 6 committee of emails and text messages about the insurrection effort from Trump allies, including several from Ginni Thomas.
© New York Daily News
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was hit with new financial disclosure allegations as reports Monday said he plans to resubmit previous forms that omitted property sales to a GOP mega donor.
In the latest ethics blow for the conservative jurist, Thomas reportedly has claimed that he was paid between $50,000 and $100,000 annually by a Nebraska real estate company set up by his controversial wife, Ginni Thomas.
But the company went out of business in 2006, the Washington Post reported. It was replaced by a new company that took over its land-leasing business, but Clarence Thomas continued to report income from the previous company.
The new allegation came as Thomas reportedly has told associates he will file amended disclosure forms to cover blockbuster revelations in recent days about his financial ties to billionaire Republican mega donor Harlan Crow, CNN reported Monday.
Thomas failed to report sales of three properties, including his elderly mother’s home in Savannah, Ga., to Crow a decade ago. As previously revealed, the judge also failed to report that Crow paid for the Thomases’ lavish vacations, including a $500,000 private plane-and-yacht junket to Indonesia.
Crow, a Texas real estate magnate, denounced the reports Monday as “a political hit job” in an interview with the Dallas Morning News.
Thomas last put out a rare statement claiming he had been told the vacations weremere “personal hospitality” that did not need to be reported to the IRS.
He has not responded to reports about the property sales. Federal law require judges and other officials to disclose all property sales except for homes that they live in.
Congressional Democrats have demanded investigations into the allegations against Thomas, whom they portray as a serial violator of ethics rules.
“There is at least reasonable cause to believe that Justice Thomas intentionally disregarded the disclosure requirement to report the sale of his interest in the Savannah properties in an attempt to hide the extent of his financial relationship with Crow,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said in a joint statement.
They want Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to launch an investigation and have asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to look into whether Thomas violated federal ethics laws.
The lapses have shined a spotlight on the virtually nonexistent oversight of Supreme Court justices, who mostly are left to police their own behavior.
Aside from his disclosure failings, Thomas has refused to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election even though his wife is a prominent ally of former President Donald Trump who pushed for him to overturn President Joe Biden’s win.
He was the lone dissenter in an 8-1 decision that forced the handover to the congressional Jan. 6 committee of emails and text messages about the insurrection effort from Trump allies, including several from Ginni Thomas.
© New York Daily News
Matthew Chapman
April 17, 2023
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. (Photo by Preston Keres/USDA)
Senate Democrats are considering asking Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to come before an ethics hearing following a series of financial scandals, reported POLITICO on Monday.
"Democrats on the Judiciary Committee met Monday evening in Chair Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) office to discuss details of the hearing, which is still in the planning stages," reported Katherine Tully-McManus and Burgess Everett. "'We’re going to have hearings. This work period, I hope. Maybe even in the next few weeks,' Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said after the meeting. Rather than making the politically explosive move of subpoenaing Thomas, Blumenthal said he hoped the justice would answer committee members’ questions voluntarily."
"'We’re going to have hearings. This work period, I hope. Maybe even in the next few weeks,' Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said after the meeting," said the report. "Rather than making the politically explosive move of subpoenaing Thomas, Blumenthal said he hoped the justice would answer committee members’ questions voluntarily."
Reporting from ProPublica revealed that Thomas, one of the Court's most far-right members, has been accepting hundreds of thosuands of dollars in luxury travel and accommodations from billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow. A follow-up report indicated that Crow also bought real estate from Thomas. None of this was disclosed.
Thomas claimed that ethics laws were vague and he didn't believe disclosure of these transactions were necessary — which legal experts broadly disagree with. He updated his disclosures to reflect the real estate purchase.
"'What he did is really unprecedented, the magnitude of the gifts and luxury travel but the money changing hands and the nondisclosure,' said Blumenthal," the report continued. "Senators are still hoping that the Supreme Court will take its own action, but Durbin said his panel was also open to discussing proposals to impose a formal code of ethics on the court."
April 17, 2023
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. (Photo by Preston Keres/USDA)
Senate Democrats are considering asking Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to come before an ethics hearing following a series of financial scandals, reported POLITICO on Monday.
"Democrats on the Judiciary Committee met Monday evening in Chair Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) office to discuss details of the hearing, which is still in the planning stages," reported Katherine Tully-McManus and Burgess Everett. "'We’re going to have hearings. This work period, I hope. Maybe even in the next few weeks,' Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said after the meeting. Rather than making the politically explosive move of subpoenaing Thomas, Blumenthal said he hoped the justice would answer committee members’ questions voluntarily."
"'We’re going to have hearings. This work period, I hope. Maybe even in the next few weeks,' Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said after the meeting," said the report. "Rather than making the politically explosive move of subpoenaing Thomas, Blumenthal said he hoped the justice would answer committee members’ questions voluntarily."
Reporting from ProPublica revealed that Thomas, one of the Court's most far-right members, has been accepting hundreds of thosuands of dollars in luxury travel and accommodations from billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow. A follow-up report indicated that Crow also bought real estate from Thomas. None of this was disclosed.
Thomas claimed that ethics laws were vague and he didn't believe disclosure of these transactions were necessary — which legal experts broadly disagree with. He updated his disclosures to reflect the real estate purchase.
"'What he did is really unprecedented, the magnitude of the gifts and luxury travel but the money changing hands and the nondisclosure,' said Blumenthal," the report continued. "Senators are still hoping that the Supreme Court will take its own action, but Durbin said his panel was also open to discussing proposals to impose a formal code of ethics on the court."
Unequal Justice: Clarence Thomas isn't going anywhere
Bill Blum, The Progressive
April 16, 2023
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at Stetson University College of Law. (Credit: Stetson University)
The problem with Justice Clarence Thomas isn’t just that he’s reactionary or morally bankrupt. It’s that he isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Thomas is in his thirty-first year on the high court, placing him twelfth on the list of longest-serving Supreme Court justices in history. While he will turn seventy-five in June, he appears in reasonably good physical health, and has no intentions of stepping down.
In 1993, Thomas told two of his law clerks that he planned to serve on the court until 2034, and that until then he would do his utmost to make the lives of liberals “miserable.” If his plans hold, Thomas will eventually become the longest-tenured Justice of all time, surpassing William O. Douglas, who stayed on the panel for thirty-six years and 209 days.
Earlier this month, Thomas again made good on his pledge to own the libs—and further erode the stature of the Supreme Court in the process, when he issued a statement denying any wrongdoing in response to a bombshell ProPublica article. The investigation revealed a stunning array of secret gifts that Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas, the crackpot uber-right election denier, have received from Texas billionaire and Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow over the past twenty years.
Crow is a founder of the conservative nonprofit Club for Growth. He also sits on the board of the American Enterprise Institute, an aggressive rightwing think tank with a long track record of publicizing and promoting amicus briefs in pending Supreme Court cases. The institute’s roster of affiliated scholars over the decades has included the likes of Newt Gingrich, Dinesh D’Souza, and Robert Bork. Crow also reportedly houses a signed copy of Mein Kampf and two paintings by the Führer himself in the art collection that he maintains at his Highland Park mansion in Dallas County, Texas.
On April 6, ProPublica reported that the Thomases took a 2019 trip to Indonesia on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet, followed by a nine-day island-hopping cruise aboard Crow’s superyacht. ProPublica reporters valued the junket at more than $500,000 dollars, nearly double Thomas’s annual salary of $285,000.
The Indonesia excursion was only one of many trips for which Crow has picked up the check on the Thomases’ behalf. Thomas and his wife regularly take summer vacations at Crow’s rustic resort in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, and have been hosted at Crow’s ranch in East Texas. Crow also paid for Thomas to attend a one-week retreat at the exclusive all-male Bohemian Grove in California. And to top off his beneficence, in 2011, Crow gave half a million dollars to a Tea Party group founded by Ginni Thomas, who received a $120,000 salary from the group.
On April 13,ProPublica updated its reporting to add that in 2014, Crow purchased the two-bedroom home in Savannah, GA, where Thomas’s mother lived, along with two nearby vacant lots, for $133,363. The home was jointly owned by Thomas, his mother, and the family of the Justice’s late brother. Expensive improvements were subsequently made to the property, where a source told ProPublica Thomas’s mother still resides.
Thomas’s rejoinder to the original ProPublica story (he has not as yet replied to the update), was released by the court’s public information office. It is a work of evasion and artifice, reading in full:
Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years. As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them. Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal 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. And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future.
That last sentence refers to new guidelines adopted in March by the Judicial Conference of the United States, the administrative arm of the federal courts that modestly tightens the financial disclosures federal judges must make each year for themselves and their spouses under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act (EGA) to safeguard against conflicts of interest.
The new regulations require judges to disclose gifts in excess of $415 from people other than relatives, any complimentary transportation, and any free stays at commercial properties. There is a giant loophole, however, in both the new and old regulations that Thomas has exploited: Free lodging at the personal residences or properties owned by individuals (rather than corporations) is exempt under a “private hospitality exception,” and need not be reported.
The loophole is outrageous, but not as wide as Thomas apparently thinks. Even if he had no obligation to report his sojourns on Crow’s ranch and Adirondack summer playground, Thomas still had a duty to disclose other goodies such as the purchase of his family’s Savannah home, his trip to Bohemian Grove, his numerous rides on Crow’s private jet, and his Indonesian cruise.
“When a Justice’s lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust,” Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told ProPublica for its initial article. “Quite frankly, it makes my heart sink.”
Thomas’s official statement is also rife with hypocrisy. In a 2020 documentary film about his life, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, Thomas can be seen on-screen, quipping, “I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States. I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer that—I prefer being around that.” The documentary was bankrolled in part by—you guessed it—Harlan Crow.
Like Thomas, Crow has released a statement denying any improprieties in his relationship with the Justice.
The ProPublica revelations are by no means Thomas’s first brush with ethics issues. Scandals and controversy have long dogged Thomas, dating back to his raucous 1991 Senate confirmation hearing, when he was credibly accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill and other female colleagues while he was the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In 2011, amid an outcry from Common Cause and other watchdog groups, he was forced to amend thirteen years of disclosures for failing to report his wife Ginni’s income from the Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College, and other employers. Thomas claimed at the time that he that he had misunderstood his reporting responsibilities, and simply checked the wrong boxes on his disclosure forms, an odd response from a Supreme Court justice, let alone a lawyer.
In 2021 and again in 2022, Thomas arguably crossed ethical lines once more when he failed to recuse himself in cases involving the January 6 insurrection and Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, despite Ginni’s prominent role as an organizer of the “Stop the Steal” campaign. Thomas’s participation in such cases may have violated the federal recusal statute.
As veteran legal commentator Adam Cohen noted in a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Democrats and Republicans in Congress joined forces fifty-four years ago to demand that Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resign as a result of alleged financial improprieties that pale in comparison to those involving Thomas.
Although Thomas is a clear-cut candidate for impeachment or at the very least an investigation by the Senate Judiciary committee, there is no chance today of a similar bipartisan move against Thomas. The Republican Party of 2023 loves Clarence Thomas, and as long as it does, he isn’t going anywhere.
Bill Blum, The Progressive
April 16, 2023
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at Stetson University College of Law. (Credit: Stetson University)
The problem with Justice Clarence Thomas isn’t just that he’s reactionary or morally bankrupt. It’s that he isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Thomas is in his thirty-first year on the high court, placing him twelfth on the list of longest-serving Supreme Court justices in history. While he will turn seventy-five in June, he appears in reasonably good physical health, and has no intentions of stepping down.
In 1993, Thomas told two of his law clerks that he planned to serve on the court until 2034, and that until then he would do his utmost to make the lives of liberals “miserable.” If his plans hold, Thomas will eventually become the longest-tenured Justice of all time, surpassing William O. Douglas, who stayed on the panel for thirty-six years and 209 days.
Earlier this month, Thomas again made good on his pledge to own the libs—and further erode the stature of the Supreme Court in the process, when he issued a statement denying any wrongdoing in response to a bombshell ProPublica article. The investigation revealed a stunning array of secret gifts that Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas, the crackpot uber-right election denier, have received from Texas billionaire and Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow over the past twenty years.
Crow is a founder of the conservative nonprofit Club for Growth. He also sits on the board of the American Enterprise Institute, an aggressive rightwing think tank with a long track record of publicizing and promoting amicus briefs in pending Supreme Court cases. The institute’s roster of affiliated scholars over the decades has included the likes of Newt Gingrich, Dinesh D’Souza, and Robert Bork. Crow also reportedly houses a signed copy of Mein Kampf and two paintings by the Führer himself in the art collection that he maintains at his Highland Park mansion in Dallas County, Texas.
On April 6, ProPublica reported that the Thomases took a 2019 trip to Indonesia on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet, followed by a nine-day island-hopping cruise aboard Crow’s superyacht. ProPublica reporters valued the junket at more than $500,000 dollars, nearly double Thomas’s annual salary of $285,000.
The Indonesia excursion was only one of many trips for which Crow has picked up the check on the Thomases’ behalf. Thomas and his wife regularly take summer vacations at Crow’s rustic resort in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, and have been hosted at Crow’s ranch in East Texas. Crow also paid for Thomas to attend a one-week retreat at the exclusive all-male Bohemian Grove in California. And to top off his beneficence, in 2011, Crow gave half a million dollars to a Tea Party group founded by Ginni Thomas, who received a $120,000 salary from the group.
On April 13,ProPublica updated its reporting to add that in 2014, Crow purchased the two-bedroom home in Savannah, GA, where Thomas’s mother lived, along with two nearby vacant lots, for $133,363. The home was jointly owned by Thomas, his mother, and the family of the Justice’s late brother. Expensive improvements were subsequently made to the property, where a source told ProPublica Thomas’s mother still resides.
Thomas’s rejoinder to the original ProPublica story (he has not as yet replied to the update), was released by the court’s public information office. It is a work of evasion and artifice, reading in full:
Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years. As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them. Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal 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. And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future.
That last sentence refers to new guidelines adopted in March by the Judicial Conference of the United States, the administrative arm of the federal courts that modestly tightens the financial disclosures federal judges must make each year for themselves and their spouses under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act (EGA) to safeguard against conflicts of interest.
The new regulations require judges to disclose gifts in excess of $415 from people other than relatives, any complimentary transportation, and any free stays at commercial properties. There is a giant loophole, however, in both the new and old regulations that Thomas has exploited: Free lodging at the personal residences or properties owned by individuals (rather than corporations) is exempt under a “private hospitality exception,” and need not be reported.
The loophole is outrageous, but not as wide as Thomas apparently thinks. Even if he had no obligation to report his sojourns on Crow’s ranch and Adirondack summer playground, Thomas still had a duty to disclose other goodies such as the purchase of his family’s Savannah home, his trip to Bohemian Grove, his numerous rides on Crow’s private jet, and his Indonesian cruise.
“When a Justice’s lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust,” Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told ProPublica for its initial article. “Quite frankly, it makes my heart sink.”
Thomas’s official statement is also rife with hypocrisy. In a 2020 documentary film about his life, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, Thomas can be seen on-screen, quipping, “I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States. I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer that—I prefer being around that.” The documentary was bankrolled in part by—you guessed it—Harlan Crow.
Like Thomas, Crow has released a statement denying any improprieties in his relationship with the Justice.
The ProPublica revelations are by no means Thomas’s first brush with ethics issues. Scandals and controversy have long dogged Thomas, dating back to his raucous 1991 Senate confirmation hearing, when he was credibly accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill and other female colleagues while he was the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In 2011, amid an outcry from Common Cause and other watchdog groups, he was forced to amend thirteen years of disclosures for failing to report his wife Ginni’s income from the Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College, and other employers. Thomas claimed at the time that he that he had misunderstood his reporting responsibilities, and simply checked the wrong boxes on his disclosure forms, an odd response from a Supreme Court justice, let alone a lawyer.
In 2021 and again in 2022, Thomas arguably crossed ethical lines once more when he failed to recuse himself in cases involving the January 6 insurrection and Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, despite Ginni’s prominent role as an organizer of the “Stop the Steal” campaign. Thomas’s participation in such cases may have violated the federal recusal statute.
As veteran legal commentator Adam Cohen noted in a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Democrats and Republicans in Congress joined forces fifty-four years ago to demand that Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resign as a result of alleged financial improprieties that pale in comparison to those involving Thomas.
Although Thomas is a clear-cut candidate for impeachment or at the very least an investigation by the Senate Judiciary committee, there is no chance today of a similar bipartisan move against Thomas. The Republican Party of 2023 loves Clarence Thomas, and as long as it does, he isn’t going anywhere.
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