Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas went on two more trips provided by Texas billionaire and conservative donor Harlan Crow than he previously disclosed, according to a Senate Democrat-led 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court released on Saturday. Thomas didn’t include the trips in his past financial forms, and, according to the committee, they only heard about them after threatening to subpoena Crow.
Democratic staff members of the Judiciary Committee concluded their investigation with a 93-page report—along with about 800 pages of documents—that delves into what they describe as an “ethical crisis” of the court’s own making.
In a statement after the report became public on Saturday, Michael Zona, a spokesman for Crow, denounced the inquiry as “political, partisan, and unconstitutional from the start” and held that his client had turned over the information “voluntarily.”
The additional trips on Crow’s dime were one of the “few new revelations in a report that otherwise largely summarized information about largess accepted by justices — and failures to disclose it — that had already become public,” the New York Times’ Charlie Savage reports.
The two previously undisclosed trips—one where Thomas flew on Crow’s private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, NY for a five-day retreat at one of the billionaire’s residences and another where the justice spent the night on Crow’s yacht after being flown from Washington, DC to New Jersey for the dedication of a statue—both took place in 2021. The recently unveiled itinerary is the latest revelations against Thomas, who has come under fire for reportedly accepting millions of dollars in gifts.
According to the Judiciary Committee report, Thomas has accepted lavish gifts from wealthy benefactors, “several of whom had business before the Court, and nearly all of whom first met Thomas after he joined the Court,” since his confirmation in 1991.
“The number, value, and extravagance of the gifts accepted by Justice Thomas,” the report reads, “have no comparison in modern American history.”
Following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016 during a free stay at another Texas businessman’s hunting lodge, members of the Supreme Court have come under increased scrutiny about how they disclose—or don’t—these kinds of gifts. That scrutiny grew exponentially when, in the spring of 2023, ProPublica released a series of investigations into Justice Thomas and Crow’s decades-long relationship.
Drawing from flight records, internal documents distributed to Crow’s employees, and interviews with dozens of people “ranging from his superyacht’s staff to members of the secretive Bohemian Club to an Indonesian scuba diving instructor,” ProPublica found that “Crow’s access to the justice extends to anyone the businessman chooses to invite along” including “corporate executives and political activists.” (Following ProPublica’s reporting, this past summer, Thomas amended his financial disclosure for 2019 to include other trips involving Crow, writing that he “inadvertently omitted” them on his previous reports.)