But, didn’t we already know this?
People need to understand how truly dishonorable and disrespectful this was to the trajectory of Black excellence in America. pic.twitter.com/hyNvJcMRny
— Bashon W. Mann (@bonsaidream) April 8, 2023
Gifting this link because the more people know about these guys, the better. #HarlanCrow #ClarenceThomas https://t.co/zy9uXfMle0
— Portia ♍️ 🐳McGonagal portiamcgonagal1619 on Insta (@PortiaMcGonagal) April 8, 2023
"It was 2004 when the LA Times disclosed that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted expensive gifts & private plane trips paid for by Harlan Crow" @latimes @DavidGSavage . Today's blockbuster by @propublica shows "he stopped disclosing them." https://t.co/qxGHXMfgqZ
— Kimbriell Kelly (@Kimbriell) April 6, 2023
MORE CORRUPTION: Harlan Crow made a $500,000 contribution to Ginni Thomas' Liberty Central, which in turn, paid her $120K a year salary! Clarence Thomas failed to disclose his his wife’s income during this period and the sources of Liberty’s funds were not publicly disclosed. pic.twitter.com/PGMw30bqjN
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) April 8, 2023
20 years ago(!), @latimes reported that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted expensive gifts and private plane trips paid for by billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow.
After that Thomas stopped disclosing them.
Via @DavidGSavage https://t.co/BO6iwuzweh
— Lisa Fung (@lfung) April 6, 2023
Breaking News: Justice Clarence Thomas defended himself against allegations that he had accepted lavish gifts without proper disclosure. He said he had followed guidance from others at the Supreme Court and believed he was not required to report the trips. https://t.co/heYPhLImbl
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 7, 2023
Thomas didn't respond to detailed questions for our first story. His statement afterward did not dispute our reporting about his trips. It also did not address broader criticisms from experts & other judges that he broke long-standing ethical norms.https://t.co/fVCSVSDNSN
— ProPublica (@propublica) April 8, 2023
Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire
by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski
April 6, 5 a.m. EDTIN 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.
Thomas did not respond to a detailed list of questions.
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said he was advised that he did not have to disclose luxury trips paid for by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow because Crow and his wife are “personal friends,” he said in his first statement on the issue Friday, amid calls for his impeachment. pic.twitter.com/5wkbaQ2Xdr
— Forbes (@Forbes) April 7, 2023
So, Clarence Thomas’s excuse for violating the law requiring him to disclose his trips paid for by his billionaire Republican donor is that he didn’t know the rules had changed recently but it’s his “intent to follow this guidance in the future.” 😏 https://t.co/ft5eYANLnR
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) April 7, 2023
In a statement, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said he was not required to disclose the many trips he and his wife took that were paid for by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. https://t.co/w1KhxvYamf
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 7, 2023
Oh please! Let’s stop with the “liberal press” BS. I’m a conservative and I know like YOU do that this stinks. $500,000 of free stuff—and that was just one trip?! ANYONE in PUBLIC SERVICE knows that kind of spending is not just “hospitality”. #Ethics https://t.co/iXcZOnjkrO
— Michael Steele (@MichaelSteele) April 9, 2023
I guess there are no solid ethics rules for Supreme Court Justices because the Founders assumed that anyone who rose to that level had to be supremely honest, law abiding, beyond reproach and of the highest moral fiber. #ClarenceThomasMustResign pic.twitter.com/WWcUgDB0aX
— Kenny BooYah! 🖖🏾 (@KwikWarren) April 8, 2023
And then those who defended it
Corruption isn't just quid pro quo. It can also be using your wealth and influence to assemble powerful friends who will go into defense mode for you at the drop of a hat.
This is the Jeffrey Epstein playbook. https://t.co/AvznFfI0x8
— Andy KarlSon of Frankenstein (@RevAndyKarlson) April 9, 2023
Love to have the guy who wrote the torture memos stick up for the guy who voted to hide evidence of his wife's involvement in a right-wing insurrection because both are tight with a billionaire who collects Hitler memorabilia. Really great stuff happening. https://t.co/4ttMeEVmxA
— Mike Duncan (@mikeduncan) April 8, 2023
The other thing to consider is if you look closely, Harlan Crow is an Anti Trump conservative who funds stuff like Our Principles, The Dispatch, No Labels and people like Brian Kemp and Liz Cheney. Attacking people like this for being Nazis seems… counterproductive.
— River_Tam ᵖᵃʳᵒᵈʸ (@RiverTamYDN) April 9, 2023
Looks like Harlan Crow paid Clarence Thomas an inflated price for his properties, too. Thomas valued his stake in these properties at "$15,000 or less." Crow paid $133,363 for them. https://t.co/kYirxtiufv
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) April 13, 2023
Whatever the merits of this statement from Harlan Crow, it does not explain why Thomas refused to disclose these major gifts as required by law. Let’s say it’s true that Crow just wanted to build a museum. The question remains: Why didn’t Thomas disclose it? https://t.co/f6jGDtAHeL
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) April 13, 2023
Harlan Crow didn’t just buy Clarence Thomas’s childhood home.
Thomas’s mother still lived there! Crow spent tens of thousands of dollars renovating it—and purchased adjacent property to increase the value of the neighborhood. https://t.co/kiVkv2T1FL pic.twitter.com/lNJX4aLbmJ
— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) April 13, 2023
This stuff is great because it helpfully illustrates what’s wrong with Thomas accepting these gifts. These guys clearly feel indebted to Crow and can’t remain silent even when it’s incredibly humiliating to defend him on this https://t.co/X9qrHYXSkU
— warrior cop (@wyatt_privilege) April 9, 2023
2. Last week, ProPublica revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas had been palling around for decades with a rightwing billionaire, accepting luxury gifts virtually every year, including world tours on his superyacht.
— The Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) April 15, 2023
4. In response to the report, he said, in so many words, that he didn’t determine himself what the law is, relied on someone else to tell him then failed to obey the law based on that other person’s misreading of it, so it wasn’t his fault that he failed to obey.
— The Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) April 15, 2023
6. This is what I zeroed in on last week. I said that if I were a billionaire hoping to influence a justice, I’d want to do it without appearing to be doing it.
— The Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) April 15, 2023
8. The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have begun raising hell in response to ProPublica’s report. That’s good. The first branch of government should reassert its authority over the third.
— The Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) April 15, 2023
Justice Thomas has shown a pattern of blatant noncompliance with disclosure requirements.
Today, @RepHankJohnson and I sent a letter to the Judicial Conference asking them to refer Justice Thomas to DOJ for investigation. pic.twitter.com/glzp26cXI7
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) April 14, 2023
It would be best for the Chief Justice to commence a proper investigation, but after a week of silence from the Court and this latest disturbing reporting, I’m urging the Judicial Conference to step in and refer Justice Thomas to the Attorney General for investigation.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) April 14, 2023
“Over the last two decades, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has reported on required financial disclosure forms that his family received rental income totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars…⁰But that company…has not existed since 2006.” https://t.co/OFav0sBzct
— Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (@IBJIYONGI) April 16, 2023
20. At this rate, the Thomases and the Crows will be blood kin next week.
No one’s paying attention to the evolution of this relationship. We should.
— The Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) April 15, 2023
the takeaway from the WSJ pushback is that there are a lot of other people who accepted “personal hospitality” in this way who need to be reassured that it was fine actually https://t.co/WBkRsNAa0A
— post malone ergo propter malone (@PropterMalone) April 8, 2023
Opinion | 54 Years Ago, a Supreme Court Justice Was Forced to Quit for Behavior Arguably Less Egregious Than Thomas’s – The New York Times https://t.co/R0Cd8esjWL
— Rugged Amethyst #TexasBorn #CaliBred (@groove_sdc) April 11, 2023
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊