2023-09-01 09:18:39
by Viviana Mazza
Months of controversy and now the confirmation of the Court: the judge, a supporter of Trump and very conservative, has received for years trips, holidays and gifts from a maxi financier of the Republican party, Harlan Crow, and other billionaires
Controversy over Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ travels, vacations and other transactions paid for by a major Republican party financier, Texan real estate tycoon Harlan Crow, have been going on for months. To the point that at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last April, comedian Roy Wood Jr. said that Thomas travels the world as “an Instagram model” and that billionaires “always find new things to buy”. “This one bought a Supreme Court justice, and a black one at that,” said Wood, also African American. “There are only two, so Harlan Crow has half the inventory. This is an NFT».
Justice Thomas first acknowledged some of these transactions yesterday, having been given an extra 90 days to file the financial statement that Supreme Court justices must make public each year. He confirmed that he traveled in 2022 aboard Crow’s planes on three occasions: two to Dallas for conferences (in May he says he opted for the private jet given the risks to his safety linked to the revelation that the Court was preparing to abolish the ruling on abortion Roe v. Wade) and one to go on vacation with his wife Ginni, a conservative activist, to the tycoon’s resort in New York State. But he defended himself, explaining that he had been told that these trips fell under “hospitality exceptions” that did not need to be communicated and that it was only in March that the Judicial Conference, which establishes the ethical rules, specified that they should be included. ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism organization, which was the first to publish the rumors, says that these are not isolated cases, but a lifestyle: at least 38 vacations, 24 private flights and eight by helicopter, plus a dozen VIP tickets to sporting events, which Thomas has undisclosedly received over the years from four billionaires, including an estimated $100,000 in tuition paid by Crow between 2006 and 2008 for a great-grandson whom the judge grows up like a son.
In the filing, Thomas also confirms that Crow bought three real estate properties from him in 2014 in Savannah, Georgia, one of which the judge’s mother continues to live in even after the sale. The transactions, according to his lawyer, had been “inadvertently omitted” in previous financial statements. “Critics say he hasn’t disclosed gifts he received from wealthy friends. That’s not true,” says attorney Elliot Berke. “He’s never accepted a gift from someone with a case in the court. Anyone who knows him knows that nothing can influence his jurisprudence. Friends are dear, close, and apart.”
ProPublica wrote that another conservative judge, Samuel Alito, flew to Alaska on billionaire Paul Singer’s jet to go fishing in 2008 and, years later, heard cases involving a subsidiary of Singer’s hedge fund. He was recently in Rome, at the expense of the University of Notre Dame for a speech on abortion: he included the trip in the financial statement, as did the former judges of the liberal wing Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg when they accepted flights from billionaires , respectively for a wedding and a tour in Israel. The Supreme Court is trying to define a code of ethics but lacks the unanimous agreement that Chief Justice John Roberts would like. Democrats in the Senate are pushing for rules, but Alito says it’s not Congress’ job. Meanwhile, the Court’s credibility is at an all-time low in polls.
September 1, 2023 (change September 1, 2023 | 09:18)
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