Members of Congress are demanding investigations into long-running allegations of corruption surrounding US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is once again the subject of intense scrutiny after a bombshell investigation found him accepting luxury vacations from a Republican megadonor for more than 20 years.
Justice Thomas accepted trips to Indonesia and New Zealand on board Harlan Crow’s superyacht, regularly flies on his private jet and joins annual summer trips to the Texas developer’s Adirondacks resort – trips that would otherwise cost tens of thousands of dollars but do not appear anywhere on his financial disclosures, according to documents and interviews in a sweeping investigation from ProPublica.
Ethics law experts believe the absence of such trips from those disclosure forms likely violate a law that requires justices to disclose most of the gifts they receive.
“This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corruption is shocking – almost cartoonish. Thomas must be impeached,” said Democratic US Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
She said that the legacy of the Supreme Court under chief Justice John Roberts will include “rank corruption, erosion of democracy, and the stripping of human rights.”
“This cries out for the kind of independent investigation that the Supreme Court – and only the Supreme Court, across the entire government – refuses to perform,” said Democratic US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
“Why did Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas keep these ultra luxury gifts from a GOP donor secret? Because Justice Thomas knew it was wrong to accept these secret gifts,” said Democratic US Rep Ted Lieu, who has called on Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan to pass legislation that would mandate a code of conduct on the nation’s high court.
“For the good of the country, he should resign,” Mr Lieu said.
A statement from Mr Crow did not deny that he extended “hospitality” to Justice Thomas and his wife Virginia “Ginni” Thomas “over the years” after becoming friends in 1996, but he said the time they spent together was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”
In 2019, after voting in cases involving extreme partisan gerrymandering, racial discrimination on jury panels and the separation of church and state, Justice Thomas boarded Mr Crow’s private jet bound for Indonesia, a trip that could have exceeded $500,000, according to ProPublica.
During one trip to Mr Crow’s lakeside compound in the Adirondacks in 2017, the justice was joined by executives from Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers, major GOP donors and one of the leaders of the right-wing thinktank American Enterprise Institute, according to records reviewed by ProPublica.
A painting that hangs in the property shows Justice Thomas in a group with Leonard Leo, the right-wing legal activist and former Federalist Society vice president regarded as the architect of a movement that has radically reshaped the federal judiciary and Supreme Court.
Mr Crow has donated more than $10m to Republican causes and groups that have advanced right-wing legal theories, including the Federalist Society, according to publicly disclosed political contributions reviewed by ProPublica.
Civil rights groups, left-leaning court reform organisations and ethics watchdogs have also demanded congressional inquiries into the Supreme Court and its ties to powerful donors and special interests.
“The Senate cannot let this extraordinary display of corruption and lawbreaking go unanswered,” Demand Justice executive director Brian Fallon said in a statement shared with The Independent.
“Senate Democrats cannot force Thomas to resign or give him the impeachment trial he clearly deserves, but they can hold hearings to further expose Justice Thomas’ apparent lawbreaking and the Republican justices’ deep ties to far-right donors,” he added. “As long as we are stuck with a Supreme Court made up of corrupt idealogues in the pocket of far-right donors, the American people deserve to know the truth.”
Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that “when a justice’s lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust.”
“Quite frankly, it makes my heart sink,” she added.
The allegations of corruption are hardly the first involving Justice Thomas.
American Enterprise Institute gave Justice Thomas the gift of a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln in 2001. The thinktank filed briefs in at least three cases before the court that term, none of which Justice Thomas recused himself from; he either voted to support a result favoured by American Enterprise Institute or took a position that was further to the right of the group’s position.
In 2011, The New York Times reported on the “unusual” relationship between the two men, including Mr Crow’s financial support for a library project dedicated to the justice, his presentation of a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass, and a $500,000 contribution to Ginni Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group.
Politico also reported on Mr Crow’s support for Ms Thomas’s group, which also paid her a $120,000 salary.
Last year, Justice Thomas was the only justice who opposed an order that would grant the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack access to hundreds of White House documents from Donald Trump’s term – including messages sent by Ms Thomas to Mr Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Those messages – which included election-realted conspiracy theories – urged Mr Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the results of the election, undermining and dismissing millions of Americans’ votes, in order to seat Mr Trump for a second term.
A recent investigation from The Washington Post revealed that a right-wing activist group led by Ms Thomas collected nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to support her political advocacy and “wage a cultural battle against the left.”
The previously unreported donations to Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty were channeled through a right-wing thinktank that agreed to serve as a funding conduit from 2019 until the start of last year, according to The Post’s investigation. The arrangement, known as a “fiscal sponsorship,” effectively kept the group’s activities and spending secret – documents that otherwise would have to disclosed publicly if it operated as a separate nonprofit organisation.
