A video from Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas’ 1991 confirmation is played during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 2, 2023, in Washington, D.C. The committee held the hearing after a ProPublica investigation revealed that Thomas had accepted numerous luxury vacations for years from a billionaire Texas Republican real estate developer. | Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty
On Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas disclosed long-awaited information about how Republican billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow had him flewed out across the country.
According to CNN, the conservative justice who helped vote down the same affirmative action policies that sent him to law school disclosed that, in 2022, Crow paid for private jet trips for Thomas to attend a speech in Texas and a vacation at Crow’s luxurious estate in New York. Thomas reportedly claimed in May that he needed to take private transportation gifted to him by Crow due to “increased security risk” after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked.
Yes, we all remember how Thomas was so terrified of the backlash for overturning the rights of women to make their own reproductive decisions that he went out of his way to imply that the court should also move to strike down same-sex marriage and other civil rights protections.
Anyway, from CNN:
Newly released financial disclosure forms Thursday also amend prior reports to include information that had been “inadvertently omitted” from past forms including a real estate deal between Thomas and Crow back in 2014.
Thomas made the disclosures after receiving an extension to file the yearly reports that were originally due in May 2023. Justice Samuel Alito released his financial disclosures Thursday as well.
The filing comes as Thomas has been under fire from critics who say he has skirted ethics laws for years by failing to properly disclose luxury trips, real estate transactions and other gifts bankrolled by wealthy friends.
Of course, Thomas’ attorney released a statement and executive summary claiming there had been “no willful ethics transgressions” on Thomas’ part and that any errors the justice made regarding his financial disclosures, or lack thereof, were “strictly inadvertent.”
So, basically, Thomas forgot to disclose his baller-by-proxy lifestyle by accident. Like he slipped, fell and flew on a billionaire’s private jet for free without telling anybody.
The attorney also called the allegations against Thomas a “partisan feeding frenzy” and “political blood sport,” which is pretty much the way Republicans respond to anything one of their own is accused of, minus the word “witchhunt.” (But, nah, they’re the party of personal responsibility.)
Also, Thomas and his legal team seem to really love the word “inadvertent.”
More from CNN:
Thomas also disclosed Thursday that he had “inadvertently omitted” other information in past reports including a life insurance policy for his spouse, conservative activist Virginia Thomas that had a cash value under $100,000 and a bank account valued at under $70,000 in 2018.
In addition, he said that he should have disclosed a 2014 private real estate deal between Crow, Thomas and members of Thomas’ family.
It involved the sale of three Georgia properties including the home where Thomas’ mother currently lives. The deal was not listed on his financial disclosure forms.
Thomas reportedly claimed he wasn’t previously aware that he needed to disclose because he lost money on the real estate deal, but as CNN noted: “Section VII of the financial disclosure form clearly indicates, however, that a ‘transaction’ needs to be listed irrespective if there was a loss.”
But why should we expect Clarence Thomas to be on top of his own legal and ethical obligations? It’s not like he’s an officer of the highest court in the United States or anything.
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