ProPublica is a valuable investigative website that regularly shines the light of day on scandals. This one is shocking, yet not surprising. For years, Suprene Court Justice Clarence Thomas has enjoyed expensive vacations at the expense of a Texas billionaire. He has not reported these gifts.
In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.
If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.
For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.
The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.
These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.
Aren’t there ethics laws for Supreme Court Justices? Guess not.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
PZ Myers did a great takedown on this: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/04/06/so-much-for-impartial-justice/
If you are a subscriber to the linked blog, you could add a comment that the gifts didn’t stop with just those listed.
Catholic Cemeteries (archdiocese of Newark) has a photo of Harlan and wife Kathy along side Justice Thomas. There’s no date for the article nor photo but, it’s likely after 2018.
Mr. and Mrs. Crow were thanked by Thomas for their generosity…in financing the statue’s creation.”
The title of the article, “Beloved Franciscan Sister, a life-long mentor of Justice Thomas honored with Statue at Maryrest Cemetery.”
If you haven’t read the Wikipedia entry for “Error has no rights,” you should. With a SCOTUS majority of conservative Catholics, the content will provide insight.
It’s an absolutely stunning story. Not quite shocking, but it is outrageous and boggles the mind. If this isn’t plainly illegal or in plain violation of any ethical rules, Congress needs to fix that immediately.
Never reporting this on financial disclosures is supposedly illegal, but the repercussions are undefined
The fact that Thomas never reported this strongly suggests that he knew this was unethical.
How could he NOT think his actions were illegal?
Yvonne,
Thomas was concerned with the legality and determined that it is legal for him to do so. What he didn’t do was think about the ethical. Two separate realms which many people confuse and conflate. To be legal is to be ethical according to people like Thomas. We know that that is not necessarily so.
Lawyers, of whom Thomas is one, ARE required to follow rules of ethics (sometimes called “rules of professional responsibility”). And violations of such rules can get a lawyer censured, suspended or disbarred.
When I worked in the Bush 1 administration, ethics rules/laws were very strict. Federal employees (Thomas is one) were not allowed to accept any gifts, not lunch, nothing.
When I retired in Massachusetts, teachers were not allowed to accept any gift of greater value than $50. That included, for example, a group of parents contributing to a gift card in excess of that amount – say $5.00 each.
In addition, we had to take a training on the law on line every year and sign an affidavit that we understood and accepted the limitations.
It’s Okay — Ginni’s wearing a good ripofflican red coat …
Where’s Checkers, though?
There are no real ethics rules for SCOTUS. Senator Whitehorse of Rhode Island has been railing about this for years. He wrote a book about the corporate takeover of the Court. My question is whether Thomas reported this on his income tax. What’s good enough for Al Capone…
Is it time for another impeachment? Supreme Court Justices have been successfully impeached before.
Comparing Crow’s political beliefs and issues he supports to Thomas’s SUpreme Court rulings to find overlap would be, I think, revealing.
“Crow has deep connections in conservative politics. The heir to a real estate fortune, Crow oversees his family’s business empire and recently named Marxism as his greatest fear. He was an early patron of the powerful anti-tax group Club for Growth and has been on the board of AEI for over 25 years.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/06/texas-harlan-crow-clarence-thomas-gifts/#:~:text=Crow%20has%20deep%20connections%20in,AEI%20for%20over%2025%20years.
Here are more details from The Texas Tribune:
“A major Republican donor for decades, Crow has given more than $10 million in publicly disclosed political contributions. He’s also given to groups that keep their donors secret — how much of this so-called dark money he’s given and to whom are not fully known. “I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose,” Crow once told the Times.
“Crow has long supported efforts to move the judiciary to the right. He has donated to the Federalist Society and given millions of dollars to groups dedicated to tort reform and conservative jurisprudence. AEI and the Hoover Institution publish scholarship advancing conservative legal theories, and fellows at the think tanks occasionally file amicus briefs with the Supreme Court.
“On the court since 1991, Thomas is a deeply conservative jurist known for his “originalism,” an approach that seeks to adhere to close readings of the text of the Constitution. While he has been resolute in this general approach, his views on specific matters have sometimes evolved. Recently, Thomas harshly criticized one of his own earlier opinions as he embraced a legal theory, newly popular on the right, that would limit government regulation. Small evolutions in a justice’s thinking or even select words used in an opinion can affect entire bodies of law, and shifts in Thomas’ views can be especially consequential. He’s taken unorthodox legal positions that have been adopted by the court’s majority years down the line.
“Soon after Crow met Thomas three decades ago, he began lavishing the justice with gifts, including a $19,000 bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass, which Thomas disclosed. Recently, Crow gave Thomas a portrait of the justice and his wife, according to Tarabay, who painted it. Crow’s foundation also gave $105,000 to Yale Law School, Thomas’ alma mater, for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund,” tax filings show.”
“The Constitution states that Justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.” This means that the Justices hold office as long as they choose and can only be removed from office by impeachment.”
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+does+the+US+Constitution+say+about+removing+a+US+SUpreme+Court+Justice&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS751US751&oq=what+does+the+US+Constitution+say+about+removing+a+US+SUpreme+Court+Justice&aqs=chrome..69i57.11323j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Thomas will never be removed through impeachment as long as the Republicans hold enough seats in both Houses of Congress. The fascist MAGA RINOs will make sure that never happens.
The United States is probably going to be stuck with Thomas until he is brain dead or six feet under.
Thomas and Barrett are certainly not originalists. In the original Constitution, neither Blacks nor women had the right to vote. The Founders would never have imagined either of them as judges. If they are truly originalists, they should resign at once.
Catch of the day. And don’t forget, native savages aren’t people!
If they were originalists, the only modern gun that would be allowed would be a single shot black powder variety. Even that would be a stretch.
They are phonies.
Crow’s gift to Maryrest Cemetery for creation of a statue to honor a life-long mentor of Thomas’
Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court by Reagan. Enough said. Connect the dots.
Thomas was appointed by Bush, not Reagan.
The Hill (a right wing publication) posted an opinion by Neil McCluskey who is described in a bio at the Biola University site as a Catholic educator, most known for writing about the Catholic viewpoint in education. McCluskey is at the Koch’s Cato Institute. The article title, “Beginning of the End for Religious Discrimination in Education.”
The libertarian position is that taxpayers should be forced to fund religions that overtly discriminate against women and gays. Libertarians plot to make taxpayers fund the schools of Catholic churches. McCluskey’s article comes at the same time that we learn about decades of child sex abuse by priests and the massive coverup that accompanied it.
A failure to call out the plot is unconscionable.
As Jefferson said in every age, in every country the priest aligns with the despot.
Clarence and Ginny. Unethical sleazebags.
He could have just, you know, reported it.
Consciousness of guilt. Mens rea.
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was more entertaining.
Making a mockery of law and order. No wonder that so many people no longer have respect for law…
“This is just a hightax lynching.” — Clarence Thomas
Best riposte comes from Alexandra Petri in WaPo – no paywall:
Please keep in mind, my fellow Americans, that each moment I spent on the yacht was torment! That is why I did not disclose it. It was not my idea of a vacation. Every second I spent on those magnificent islands, in those bucolic retreats, eating meals cooked by private chefs, I was seething internally, wishing I were in a Walmart parking lot.
https://wapo.st/43qJX3k
That is wonderful, Christine!
Power Corrupts.
Religious Power Corrupts Religiously.
“error has no rights” (Wikipedia)
The current, most politically powerful religious sect in the nation had a brief flirtation with modernism/liberalism, in the past. The public perception that it remains liberal is false which has enabled its success in dominating SCOTUS and in enacting legislation beneficial to the Church, primarily in the red central states. The alignment of the agendas of the Church and the wealth and ideology of Republican Charles Koch doomed democracy.
“Catholicism and American Freedom – The Odd Couple”, 6-23-2004, by Neil Coughlan, at Commonweal magazine, provides insight about the flirtation.
Religious power corrupts absolutionally.
Yet makes no attempt to absolve corruption. Only humans do that.
The more I think about this, the more galling it is. Consider it a different way. Scalia turned cashing in on being on the Court into an art form. Thomas was just trying to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. But consider another person with whom both served, David Souter. He was arguably among the most simple, humble, decent, and honest people ever to serve. Being around people like Thomas and Scalia was probably a big reason he wanted to get out.
A Little Bit of History Regurgitated …
<href=”https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/cautionary-tale-abe-fortas”>Brennan Center For Justice • The Cautionary Tale of Abe Fortas
Jon,
Abe Fortas had a sense of shame. Thomas does not.
A Little Bit of History Regurgitated …
Brennan Center For Justice • The Cautionary Tale of Abe Fortas
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/cautionary-tale-abe-fortas
Thanks for the link.
If others on the Court, like Roberts, assume everyone takes grift, the standards become very low. When Roberts couples his training in “error has no rights” with court-accepted, lax ethical standards, it means there is unlikely to be an effective awakening as in the case of the Fortas example.
That’s more comments than I’ve ever seen from Jon in a single blog post,.
Must be he likes Clarence Thomas.
Mostly just Persistence Of Error (POE)* in trying to post a link before coffee.
Yes, it’s a Dr. Strangelove reference …
This story is shocking and not surprising. Clarence Thomas has been spending a lot of money on vacations without reporting it to the public. It’s important that the public knows what is happening in their government and that they can hold their politicians accountable.
Sadly, there is no way to hold Justice Thomas accountable, unless the Senate voted to impeach him. Which wouldn’t be a bad idea, considering the many years in which he cheated on his tax returns and financial disclosures.
While the jury remains out as to whether a president is above the law, it is obvious that the Supreme Court has decided they certainly are.
The point is not that Thomas has been spending a lot of money on vacations. It’s that someone ELSE has been spending THEIR money to give Thomas these vacations.