Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is facing renewed calls for his impeachment, after a ProPublica investigation revealed he failed to report frequent luxury trips paid for by a billionaire Republican megadonor named Harlan Crow, who serves on the board of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. The investigation reveals that for about 20 years Thomas secretly accepted luxury vacations from Crow, in apparent violation of a law requiring justices and other federal officials to disclose most gifts. One vacation involved nine days of island hopping in Indonesia aboard a 162-foot superyacht. Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas flew to Indonesia on Crow’s private jet. Thomas also frequently vacationed at Crow’s 105-acre resort in the Adirondacks of New York. Hanging on the walls of the resort is a painting of Clarence Thomas sitting with four other men, including Harlan Crow, as well as Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society. Thomas never reported any of the free trips as gifts.
one of the striking things here as we got into this is that — is just how few rules there are, especially compared to other people in the government. You know, I have friends who work in the federal bureaucracy who say they can’t even, you know, have somebody buy them lunch. Supreme Court justices have very few rules. In terms of accepting gifts, one of the few things the law requires them to do is to simply disclose gifts, most gifts. This was a law that was passed back in the 1970s after Watergate. And Clarence Thomas, by not reporting these private jet trips and some of the other travel, you know, appears to be just in repeat violation of that law, according to the ethics lawyers we spoke to.
— source democracynow.org | Apr 07, 2023