As ethical concerns continue to plague the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas revealed on Thursday that Harlan Crow, a major Republican supporter, paid for trips on a private plane for Thomas to partake in a lecture in Texas along with a holiday at Crow’s opulent New York house in 2022.
In one case, Thomas said that he chose to travel privately in May as a result of an “expanded security risk” brought on by the Dobbs opinion’s leak a couple of days previously, which overturned Roe v. Wade. New financial disclosure documents additionally, on Thursday, previous filings were amended to reflect details that had been “accidentally omitted” from earlier forms, such as a 2014 real estate transaction between Crow and Thomas.
Clarence Thomas Faces Severe Criticism For Negligence Of Ethical Rules
Clarence Thomas disclosed the information after being granted an augmentation to submit the annual reports that initially were due around May this year. On Thursday, Justice S. Alito also disclosed his financial information.
The petition comes at a time when Clarence Thomas is facing criticism from those who claim he has long ignored ethical rules by not being able to properly report lavish vacations, real estate deals, and various gifts funded by rich pals. In an executive summary and statement, a lawyer representing Clarence Thomas claimed that there had been “no intentional ethics violations” and the prior mistakes in reporting had been “strictly unintentional.”
Additionally, the attorney disputed what he described as a “partisan frenzy” against the justice, which he likened to a “political sport.” The nature of Clarence Thomas’ association with Crow throughout the years and how far they traveled was originally reported by ProPublica. In a declaration following the ProPublica article, Thomas confirmed the friendship while emphasizing that Crow had no legal matters on the table. He had reported that the reason he did not reveal the trip years was because he had been told at the time that he was not required to record them.
