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For the first time, US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas formally declared that he had a luxury vacation paid for by billionaire businessman Harlan Crow, who is also a major donor to the Republican Party. The information is contained in the form that Thomas, like all Supreme Court justices, is required to submit every year to demonstrate the source of his income, gifts and investment transactions made in a year, which was released on Friday.
In the last period, the interest of the public and newspapers in these forms has grown considerably after some journalistic investigations revealed that many of them, in particular Thomas, had never communicated important incomes and luxury holidays spent with influential entrepreneurs, in some cases owned businesses that were at the time the center of a case before the Supreme Court. By law, Court judges can accept gifts but must declare them, and if they believe there is a conflict of interest or that they cannot be objective about a case they should avoid taking part.
Thomas is 75 years old, and is known for being the most conservative member of the Supreme Court. Among other things, the report presented on Friday certifies that in 2019 Crow paid him for two trips: one he took with his wife to Indonesia, during which they traveled on several occasions on a private jet owned by Crow and on a large yacht luxury, and the other in an exclusive club in Sonoma, California.
The trips he accepted from Crow in 2019 were revealed last year by an online newspaper investigation ProPublica, but it is the first time the judge has explicitly mentioned them in a financial document. ProPublica he also revealed that Thomas used to spend at least a week every summer at a resort owned by Crow in the Adirondack Mountains, New York, and occasionally in other places, sometimes even in the presence of the entrepreneur.
After the investigation was published, Thomas said he was not required to declare such gifts, a claim now refuted by his correction of financial documents.
On Friday, in addition to Thomas, seven other judges of the nine judges who make up the Supreme Court submitted their forms: the only one who has not yet done so is the conservative judge Samuel Alito, who received a 90-day extension. Among them, four judges said they have received anywhere from $87,000 to nearly $900,000 for royalties from books they have written or are writing.
