Clarence Thomas officially disclosed he took luxury vacations paid for by the conservative billionaire, Harlan Crow – something the US supreme court justice had yet to acknowledge in the official record.
The right-leaning justice has updated a financial disclosure to the court to confirm the Crow-funded travel, to Indonesia and a men’s club in California, amending a previous version.
He belatedly reported travel paid for by others from 2019: a hotel room in Bali and food and lodging in Sonoma county, California, were paid for by Crow. He did not report any travel paid by others last year.
ProPublica first revealed the trips in April 2023, but Thomas, had not previously included them in court financial disclosure records, which are updated annually, although he had acknowledged publicly the “hospitality”. ProPublica’s reporting on Thomas and Crow won the Pulitzer prize for public service this year.
The filing only offers a brief explanation of why Thomas is now disclosing the expenses. “During the preparation and filing of this report, filer sought and received guidance from his accountant and ethics counsel,” the report says.
Following ProPublica’s reporting last year, Thomas released a statement acknowledging travel with Crow, but said Crow, a Republican mega-donor, did not have business before the court. Thomas previously said he had been advised that he did not have to report “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends”.
But Crow was affiliated with Club for Growth, which has lobbied the court with amicus briefs while Thomas has sat on it, the Guardian reported last year.
ProPublica has also reported that Thomas sold his mother’s home in Savannah, Georgia, to Crow (Thomas disclosed the transaction last year after the report). Thomas also disclosed that his wife, Ginni, received income from consulting she did on behalf of various conservative organizations, Politico reported. Thomas has faced pressure to recuse himself on cases involving the January 6 attempt to reverse the 2020 election result over his wife’s ties to the right, but he has refused so far.
Thomas received 103 gifts totaling $2.4m, according to an analysis by Fix the Court, a watchdog group. The total dollar amount he received is 10 times what his fellow justices combined received over the same period.
Thomas’s relationship with Crow set off calls for more transparency by the justices. ProPublica also reported last year that Samuel Alito, another of the court’s conservative justices, flew on a private jet and vacationed with a billionaire who had business before the court. Alito was granted a 90-day extension to file his report, something he has routinely sought.
Alito is also under scrutiny after reports from the New York Times that there was an upside-down US flag flying outside his home in Virginia as well as an Appeal to Heaven flag flying outside a beach home in New Jersey. The former is associated with the January 6 attack on the Capitol and the latter with Christian nationalism.
The supreme court’s nine justices all agreed to a code of conduct last year, though some experts have noted it does not go far enough and there is no way to adequately enforce it.
The newest justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, collected nearly $900,000 last year for her upcoming memoir, one of four supreme court justices who reported sizable income from book deals. Jackson also disclosed that Beyoncé gave her four tickets worth $3,700.
