Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended himself against allegations that he may have violated the law by not reporting vacations paid for by a billionaire Republican donor, saying he’d been told he didn’t have to report the trips.
(Bloomberg) — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended himself against allegations that he may have violated the law by not reporting vacations paid for by a billionaire Republican donor, saying he’d been told he didn’t have to report the trips.
In a one-paragraph statement Friday, Thomas said he’d sought guidance from colleagues and others in the judiciary early in his tenure as a Supreme Court justice. He said he 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,” said Thomas, a 1991 appointee of Republican President George H.W. Bush.
Thomas was responding to a ProPublica report Thursday that he and his wife accepted vacations and flights for years from Harlan Crow, a wealthy real estate developer and Republican donor. Thomas didn’t list the trips, which ProPublica said took place over more than two decades, on his annual financial disclosure reports.
The trips, valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, included travel through Indonesia aboard Crow’s 162-foot yacht, summer vacations at his luxurious New York resort and flights on his private plane. The revelations prompted renewed calls for a code of conduct that would bind Supreme Court justices.
Thomas described Crow and his wife Kathy as “among our dearest friends.” He said they had taken “a number of family trips” together over a quarter century.
The 74-year-old justice pointed to recent changes made to the gift-reporting guidelines issued by the Judicial Conference, which makes policy for the federal judiciary. Those changes narrowed the exemption for “personal hospitality,” clarifying that a broader array of trips should be reported going forward.
“It is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,” Thomas said.
Thomas’s comments did little to mollify his critics. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island alluded to a painting depicting Thomas smoking a cigar alongside Crow and prominent lawyers including Leonard Leo, the longtime Federalist Society official who helped engineer the conservative takeover of the high court.
“Oh, please,” Whitehouse tweeted. “If you’re smoking cigars with Leonard Leo and other right-wing fixers, you should know they don’t just have business before the Court — their business IS the Court.“
Whitehouse and Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia led a group of 22 lawmakers who sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts calling for an investigation into Thomas’s travel. All are Democrats except for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with that party.
The watchdog group Accountable.US said Crow’s role as a member of the board of the American Enterprise Institute proved he was not disinterested in the Supreme Court.
“First Justice Thomas hid decades of lavish gifts and travel funded by Harlan Crow, but now he’s outright lying when he says this major conservative donor had no interest in the work of the Supreme Court,” said the group’s president, Kyle Herrig. “The truth is clear: this is an unprecedented story of corruption at the highest levels, and those involved must be held accountable.”
–With assistance from Steven T. Dennis.
(Updates with letter from lawmakers in 11th paragraph.)
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