Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took even more undisclosed trips: Senate Democrats

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took two other trips donated by a Texas billionaire and conservative donor Harlan Raven than he previously disclosed, according to a 20-month Senate Democratic investigation into ethical practices at the Supreme Court released Saturday. Thomas did not include the trips in his past financial forms and, according to the committee, they only learned about them after he threatened to subpoena Crow.

Democratic staffers on the Judiciary Committee concluded their investigation with a 93-page report — accompanied by about 800 pages of documents — that delved deeper into what they described as an “ethical crisis” brought on by the court itself.

In a statement after the report became public on Saturday, Michael ZonaCrow’s spokesperson denounced the investigation as “political, partisan and unconstitutional from the start” and said his client had disclosed the information “voluntarily.”

The additional trips at Crow’s expense were one of “few new revelations in a report that otherwise largely summarized information about the judges’ largess accepted – and the failure to disclose it – that had already become public”. the New York Times‘ Charlie Sauvage reports.

The two previously undisclosed trips: one in which Thomas flew on Crow’s private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, New York, for a five-day retreat at one of the residences of the billionaire, and another in which the judge spent the night on Crow’s yacht after being flown from Washington, DC. in New Jersey for the unveiling of a statue – both took place in 2021. The newly revealed itinerary is the latest revelation against Thomas, who has been criticized for apparently accepting millions of dollars in gifts.

According to the Judiciary Committee report, Thomas accepted lavish gifts from wealthy benefactors, “several of whom had cases before the Court, and almost all of whom met Thomas for the first time after his arrival at the Court,” since his confirmation in 1991.

“The number, value, and extravagance of the gifts accepted by Judge Thomas,” the report read, “have no comparison in modern American history.”

After Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016 during a free stay at another Texas businessman’s hunting lodge, members of the Supreme Court faced increased scrutiny over how whether or not they disclose this type of gift. This scrutiny increased exponentially when, in the spring of 2023, ProPublica published a series of investigations into the decades-long relationship between Justice Thomas and Crow.

Drawing on flight records, internal documents distributed to Crow employees and interviews with dozens of people “ranging from his superyacht staff to members of the secretive Bohemian Club to an Indonesian scuba diving instructor” , ProPublica found that Crow’s “access to justice extends to anyone the businessman chooses to invite,” including “corporate executives and political activists.” (Following ProPublica’s reporting, Thomas last summer amended his 2019 financial disclosure to include other trips involving Crow, writing that he had “inadvertently omitted” them from his previous reports.)