bitchy | Clarence Thomas took millions in undisclosed gifts & travel from a GOP donor

If you haven’t done so already, I would suggest going to ProPublica and reading their entire piece on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Thomas has been a jurist on SCOTUS since 1991, and he’s been on the wrong side of history on every issue, from women’s rights to reproductive rights to gay rights to workers’ rights to safeguarding the republic. We’ve always known that Justice Thomas plays by his own set of rules, alongside his insurrectionist wife Virginia “Ginni” Thomas. But I’m not sure people were prepared for the scale and scope of Clarence Thomas’s unethical behavior. The ProPublica piece is a deep dive into Thomas’s Relationship with Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who has spent millions of dollars wining and dining Justice Thomas. Worse yet, Thomas has never disclosed these “gifts.” Here’s part of ProPublica’s piece:

In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court. These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.

Thomas did not respond to a detailed list of questions. In a statement, Crow acknowledged that he’d extended “hospitality” to the Thomases “over the years,” but said that Thomas never asked for any of it and it was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”

[From ProPublica]

The piece even points out that Crow and Thomas only met for the first time AFTER Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court. It’s not like they were old friends maintaining their relationship through thick and thin. This was very much an explicit ethical violation. Dozens, if not hundreds, of ethical violations, actually. ProPublica points out that Thomas’s failure to disclose any part of these gifts is in violation of a post-Watergate law as well, so what Thomas has done is illegal as well as unethical and contemptible. Anyway… impeach the motherf–ker. I’m so tired of this and Democrats better not hem and haw about “well, we don’t want a circus!” You’d rather have this f–king clownshow? Learn from the Trump situation: the American people are actually hungry for these corrupt a–holes to face consequences and be held accountable.

For decades, Justice Clarence Thomas has secretly accepted luxury trips from a major Republican donor, newly obtained documents and interviews show.

The extent and frequency of these apparent gifts to Thomas has no known precedent in modern SCOTUS history… 🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/ROuGuyD6r6

— ProPublica (@propublica) April 6, 2023

NEW: Clarence Thomas secretly accepted lavish luxury travel for decades from a billionaire businessman/GOP donor, in apparent repeat violation of ethics law.

Fmr judge: “It’s incomprehensible to me that someone would do this.”https://t.co/JlHQQzTGkm w/@js_kaplan @Amierjeski pic.twitter.com/yeoZsCObwY

— Justin Elliott (@JustinElliott) April 6, 2023

Photos courtesy of Instar, Backgrid, Cover Images, Avalon Red.