We learned this from an investigation by ProPublica. The quotation immediately above is the first point of their 18-part Twitter tread summarizing what they uncovered.
The billionaire who has lavished gifts on Clarence (and Ginni) Thomas, a megadonor to the Republican Party and to conservative causes (including the Club for Growth, AEI, the Hoover Institution, and various groups that rely on dark money), is Harlan Crow, heir to his father's real estate fortune. The friendship of the justice and the billionaire began after Thomas's ascent to the Supreme Court.
2 Thomas has posed as an unassuming guy with modest tastes, attracted to the heartland of the country, where regular folks hang out – as he does in a recent documentary about the justice funded in part by Thomas's fabulously generous benefactor:
"I don’t have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States,” Thomas said in a recent interview for a documentary about his life, which Crow helped finance.
"I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas said. “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that."
3 Among the many trips provided to Thomas was a 2019 jaunt to Indonesia on the billionaire’s large private jet. Clarence and Ginni would spend “nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.”
The cost of this vacation, the report notes, had the Thomases had to pay for it, would have exceeded $500,000. But the trip was on the GOP megadonor’s tab.
I’m curious: In Indonesia, as the Michaela Rose (the name of Crow’s superyacht) hopped from island to island, did the justice chafe at each of the beaches, longing to satisfy his preference for the company of regular folks in a Walmart parking lot?
4 Justice Thomas, in a statement, does not dispute a word in the Pro Publica account. He does add a grace note. Pro Publica reported that Thomas and Crow are friends. Thomas goes further, speaking for himself and Ginni, he says that Harlan and Kathy Crow are among their “dearest friends.”
I’ll bet.
“As friends do," the justice's statement reads, "we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them.”
Family trips. That sounds so wholesome.
As a justice of the high court, Thomas pulls down a $285,400 salary from the federal government. That's comfortably affluent (and higher than the income of most Walmart-shopping families), but hardly in Crow's class. It makes you wonder: How does one reciprocate after receiving gifts that, over a couple of decades, are valued in the millions of dollars?
That's required by post-Watergate reforms. Yet Thomas chose not to divulge such gifts in his required financial statements over the past two decades.
6 “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. I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.”
Hmm. The Los Angeles Times disclosed in 2004 that Thomas had accepted expensive gifts from Crow – a Bible owned by Frederick Douglass, a bust of Abraham Lincoln, and a stay (after a ride in Crow's private jet) at the Bohemian Club – based on a review of Thomas's financial disclosures. Thomas had been on the court for 13 years at that time, which one might regard as covering the period "early" in his tenure on the court. But apparently the "guidance" from unnamed, ill-informed colleagues came later.
On Thursday, the LA Times followed up on that article from 19 years ago:
What a convenient, efficient way to avoid public reproach from a nosy press corps. Or to put it another way, consistent with the original intent of the law: to dodge accountability as a public servant. Just stop filing the required reports.
7 While there is an exception to the disclosure requirement for having dinner at the home of a friend (accepting "personal hospitality" as Thomas put it), experts on this legislation note that there is no exception for the many flights on Crow's private jet, nor for much of the other largess that the GOP megadonor lavished on the Thomases. (See this review by a couple of skeptical journalists.)
Yet it was all kept secret.
8 The image at the top of this post is a painting commissioned by Crow that features him, Thomas, and several conservative operatives at the billionaire's private lakeside resort, Camp Topridge, in the Adirondacks. Crow is on the right, next to Thomas. The guests portrayed on the other side of the justice are three conservative operatives: Leonard Leo, Mark Paoletta, and Peter Rutledge. Leo is most well-known: the architect of the current conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court; the man who gathered much more than a billion dollars in contributions (either openly reported or dark money) as head of the Federalist Society, which has led the way in transforming the high court (and the federal courts beneath it) to reflect far right ideology.
Looks cozy, doesn't it, as the men – the justice, the billionaire, and the conservative operatives – all relax beneath the statue of a Native American, posed with outstretched arms and his eyes on the heavens?
Wow.
9 The photorealisitic painting, which celebrates a confab of conservative movement leaders, sets up a response to the assurance from Thomas that his many lavish encounters with Crow and company represented visits with "close personal friends, who did not have business with the court." Senator Sheldon Whitehouse responds:
Well, and don't forget the appellate and circuit courts. Leo (with a critical assist from Mitch McConnell) has transformed the whole federal judiciary.
10 Clarence Thomas embraces a theory (originalism) that statements in the Constitution must be interpreted as they were originally intended. He professes to discern the intent of our 17th century founders (though his decisions reveal a facility for cherry picking facts, rather than an understanding of history). Thomas reveals no doubts, no hesitation. He is determined to wrench American society in a different direction (to match a vision he shares with Republican activists) through decisions by an imperious Supreme Court majority.
Yet, regarding the meager ethical requirements imposed on justices of the Supreme Court, he places his failures to comply on unnamed "colleagues and others in the judiciary."
Huh?
This man is making law for the country. He has a degree from Yale. He's been on the bench for decades. He has had access to a bright cohort of law clerks. And he can't be bothered to determine the minimal requirements of a federal judge by a plain reading of the statute? He is hiding behind someone else (unnamed, from long ago "early" in his tenure) to explain away his obligations under federal law. Moreover, he appears to be blind to the least concern regarding the legitimacy of the court.
11 The magnitude of corruption revealed in this report by Pro Publica is spectacular. Bestowing material benefits that only a billionaire could afford on a federal employee charged with making consequential decisions that affect all Americans poses an obvious problem. Hence the post-Watergate reform legislation. That's pretty clear, isn't it?
Yet Republicans have offered a shrug to the revelations that one of their megadonors has showered a small fortune on a justice of the Supreme Court. The Wall St. Journal editorial page has gone further, declaring the Pro Publica story a "smear" of Thomas. Pause for a moment: Can you imagine, if Elena Kagan had accepted millions (or even hundreds of thousands, or even thousands) of dollars of gifts from George Soros, and had kept them secret, how Republicans and Paul Gigot's team at the Journal would have reacted?
12 The stench is overwhelming. Yet there are unlikely to be significant consequences.
The thoroughgoing unaccountability of the Supreme Court is beyond scandalous. Thomas's zealous drive to remake American constitutional law is representative of the whole crew in the Republican supermajority of the current court. They are in a rush to impose their vision of America on all of us. The success of that project is what matters to conservatives. They are fine with anything that furthers that end.
Last fall, the Heritage Foundation hosted a celebration of Thomas's record on the high court. Mitch McConnell, whose twisting of Senate rules was instrumental in packing the court with a 6-3 majority likely to endure for decades, spoke. He declared Thomas a "legal titan."
In other words: Yea Team Red.