Justice Thomas addresses report he accepted luxury travel from GOP donor for years

Justice Clarence Thomas says he was told trips didn't need disclosure - The Washington Post

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Friday he had been advised “by colleagues and others in the judiciary” that luxury trips financed by a close billionaire friend and conservative activist should be considered personal hospitality that did not have to be disclosed.

In the statement issued through the court’s public information office, Thomas said Harlan and Kathy Crow were among the “dearest friends” of the justice and his wife Virginia “Ginni” Thomas.

“As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them,” Thomas said in the statement. “Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”

Federal law mandates that top officials from the three branches of government, including the Supreme Court, file annual forms detailing their finances, outside income and spouses’ sources of income, with each branch determining its own reporting standards.

Judges are prohibited from accepting gifts from anyone with business before the court. Until recently, however, the judicial branch had not clearly defined an exemption for gifts considered “personal hospitality.”

Thomas noted that just last month, a committee of the Judicial Conference, the courts’ policymaking body, revised those rules to provide a fuller accounting.

Gifts such as an overnight stay at a personal vacation home owned by a friend remain exempt from reporting requirements. But the revised rules require disclosure when judges are treated to stays at commercial properties, such as hotels, ski resorts or other private retreats owned by a company, rather than an individual. The changes also clarify that judges must report travel by private jet.

In his statement, Thomas noted this “new guidance.”

“And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,” he said.

ProPublica reported Thursday on an array of trips funded by Crow, saying that Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks. It said the justice also has vacationed at Crow’s ranch in East Texas and has joined him at the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive all-male retreat in California.

It cited a nine-day trip that the Thomases took to Indonesia in 2019, shortly after the court released its final opinions of the term. That trip, which included flights on Crow’s jet and island-hopping on a superyacht, would have cost the couple more than $500,000 if they had paid for it themselves, the publication said.

It is unclear exactly who attended the gatherings and thus had access to the justice.

The report prompted furious reactions from Democrats, some of whom called for Thomas, the court’s senior justice, to resign. Republicans either defended Thomas’s right to vacation with friends or were silent.

ProPublica said Thomas did not respond to detailed questions about its reporting, and he did not respond to questions from The Washington Post and other media outlets Thursday. Some members of Congress called on Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to launch an investigation, although Roberts’s powers to police his life-tenured colleagues are limited. Roberts and a court spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Crow acknowledged that he has extended “hospitality” to the Thomases “over the years” but said that the couple “never asked for any of this hospitality” and that he has not tried to influence the justice on matters before the court.

“We have never asked about a pending or lower court case, and Justice Thomas has never discussed one, and we have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue,” Crow said. “More generally, I am unaware of any of our friends ever lobbying or seeking to influence Justice Thomas on any case, and I would never invite anyone who I believe had any intention of doing that. These are gatherings of friends.”

Thomas’s trips funded by Crow do not appear on his most recent financial disclosures. Since 2004, Thomas has reported only two gifts: an award from his alma mater Yale Law School and a bust of Frederick Douglass given to him by Crow.