Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas speaks at the Heritage Foundation on Oct. 21, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Justice Clarence Thomas did not disclose three private luxury flights he took with billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow, according to a series of documents released late Thursday by Senate Democrats.
The trips occurred between 2017 and 2021 — two were round trip affairs, and one was multi-destination, according to a document Crow’s attorneys provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In May 2017, Thomas flew on Crow’s private jet between St. Louis and Kalispell, Montana, and then disembarked in Dallas. In March 2019, the conservative jurist took the billionaire’s private jet from Washington, D.C., to Savannah, Georgia, and back. In June 2021, Thomas flew the private skies from D.C. to San Jose, California, and back.
The revelations come less than a week after Thomas added two “inadvertently omitted” 2019 trips he took — that were again paid for by Crow — to the bottom of his 2023 disclosure form. Those trips were to Indonesia and Monte Rio, California — the site of Bohemian Grove. The trips were first revealed last year by ProPublica.
News of the three additional, never-disclosed trips comes exactly one week after a report by a nonpartisan judicial reform advocacy group showed Thomas is, far and away, the largest recipient of gifts in the recorded history of the court. The total value of documented and likely gifts he has received since 1981 eclipses $5.87 million, according to Fix the Court. Thomas likely received the equivalent of almost $4.2 million in the last 20 years alone, the report says.
The latest discoveries prompted criticism.
“Nearly $4.2 million in gifts and even that wasn’t enough for Justice Thomas, with at least three additional trips the Committee found that he has failed to disclose to date,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said in a press release. “The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis is producing new information — like what we’ve revealed today — and makes it crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to meet the moment.”
Thomas had acknowledged only 27 gifts on federal disclosure forms before Fix the Court released their research. The justice’s aversion to transparency has long resulted in significant and sustained discussion about judicial ethics.
In April 2023, ProPublica set off fears of an ethical crisis within the nation’s highest court when their aforementioned report revealed that Thomas and his wife had, for decades, taken numerous undisclosed trips around the world on the Dallas billionaire’s “superyacht.”
Experts, however, told Law&Crime that the failure to disclose those trips was highly unlikely to result in any sort of sanction.
A series of subsequent ethics scandals of the same variety followed Thomas in the months that followed the yacht story.
The Code of Conduct for Justices was recently enacted in November 2023 but it carries no consequences for violations — or any way to ascertain whether such violations have occurred.
That code, essentially toothless, has increasingly been the source of criticism as various other ethics scandals have engulfed the Supreme Court in recent weeks — particularly the controversy concerning Justice Sam Alito and the flying of far-right, conspiracy theory-oriented flags at two of his residences.
The court’s critics appear intent on using each ethical flashpoint as momentum to push for a code of conduct with actual consequences.
“As a result of our investigation and subpoena authorization, we are providing the American public greater clarity on the extent of ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices and the need for ethics reform,” Durbin’s statement continued. “Despite an approval rating near all-time lows and never-ending, self-inflicted scandals, Chief Justice Roberts still refuses to use his existing authority to implement an enforceable code of conduct.”
The post ‘Nearly $4.2 million in gifts and even that wasn’t enough’: Justice Thomas took 3 undisclosed trips with GOP billionaire on luxury private jet, new documents reveal first appeared on Law & Crime.
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Author: Colin Kalmbacher
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