Justice Clarence Thomas took more trips paid for by donor Harlan Crow, Senate panel reveals
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) says the Judiciary Committee, of which he is chair, has uncovered at least three additional trips taken by Justice Clarence Thomas that were paid for by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow. The discoveries came as part of the committee’s ethics investigation into the Supreme Court.
Durbin said Thursday that the committee had obtained information from Crow that Thomas took three trips and at least six flights on Crow’s private jet in 2017, 2019 and 2021.
The panel also found evidence of private jet travel during trips to Indonesia and California that Thomas recently disclosed in an amendment to a 2019 financial disclosure.
The Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee launched the investigation last year after reports that Thomas had for years received undisclosed expensive gifts, including international travel, from Crow. The committee has since pushed the Supreme Court to adopt a stronger ethics code as trips by Thomas and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. came to light, along with six-figure book deals received by other justices.
The new information “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,” Durbin said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from the court on the Senate report.
In the past, Thomas has maintained that he is not required to disclose the many trips he and his wife took that were paid for by Crow because the donor and his wife, Kathy, are “among our dearest friends.”
Thomas said in an April 2023 statement that he was advised by colleagues on the high court and others in the federal judiciary that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”
A 2004 Los Angeles Times report disclosed gifts to Justice Thomas from rich Texan Harlan Crow. In response, Thomas stopped disclosing them.
In the last six years he has accepted free items valued at $42,200, the most on the high court.
Thomas, 75, and his wife, Virginia, have traveled on Crow’s yacht and private jet in Indonesia and stayed at his private resort in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, ProPublica reported last year. ProPublica wrote that it could have cost more than $500,000 had Thomas chartered a plane and yacht himself.
Last week, Thomas said in his annual financial disclosure that Crow paid for a hotel room in Bali, Indonesia, for a night in 2019 and for food and lodging at a private club in Sonoma County the same year. But he did not report the flights or the stay on Crow’s yacht.
In a statement released minutes after the Judiciary Committee released its report, Crow’s office said he had reached an agreement with the panel to provide information responsive to its requests going back seven years, “despite his serious and continued concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry.”
The panel voted in November to authorize a subpoena for Crow as part of the probe, despite protests from all committee Republicans.
Crow, a longtime GOP donor based in Dallas, has maintained that he has never spoken with his friend Thomas about matters pending before the court.
After ProPublica disclosed his lavish trips courtesy of GOP donor Harlan Crow, the Supreme Court justice says he’ll follow clarified rules and disclose some of the value of future trips.
The committee said it will release a full report later this year. But among the details Durbin released Thursday were a 2017 trip Thomas took on Crow’s jet from St. Louis to Montana, along with a return flight from Montana to Dallas; round-trip private jet travel in 2019 from Washington to Savannah, Ga.; and a round-trip flight on a private jet from Washington to San José in 2021.
The committee said it also has evidence of private jet travel for the 2019 trip to Indonesia, along with documentation of the eight-day yacht excursion.
The justices adopted an ethics code in November, but it lacks enforcement. The code treats travel, food and lodging as expenses rather than gifts, for which monetary values must be reported. Justices aren’t required to attach a value to expenses.
As of last year, the justices also must report private plane travel that is given to them. Thomas has declined to report trips he took before those rules went into effect.
Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Mark Sherman and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.
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