Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas becomes more and more mired in a growing ethics scandal.
According to a report released on Thursday by ProPublica, Republican megadonor Harlan Crow paid private boarding school tuition for his grandnephew. This latest discovery is likely to bring a fresh round of scrutiny to both Thomas and the ethics practices at the nation’s highest court.
Thomas had taken legal custody of his grandnephew at the time and told C-SPAN in an interview he was “raising him as a son.” Tuition at the Georgia boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month, ProPublica reported and according to some sources, Harlan ended up paying more than $100,000 on Thomas’ behalf. Furthermore, Thomas neglected to note the payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures.
The revelation was only the latest among many involving dealings between Thomas and Crow, who paid for lavish trips and private jet travel for the justice and his wife and who purchased three Georgia properties from Thomas and his family − none of which were reported on disclosure forms officials are required to file to give the public insight into their financial arrangements.
In a statement, Mark Paoletta, who has represented Thomas’ wife, Ginni, said the tuition payment was not reportable because disclosure requirements do not cover nephews.
“This malicious story shows nothing except for the fact that the Thomases and the Crows are kind, generous, and loving people who tried to help this young man,” Paoletta said.
But the storm brewing around the Thomases involves issues that go beyond the private domain, it taps into much more serious questions of ethics in our public institutions, especially the one whose function is to determine the standards of behavior that are both legal and ethical: the Supreme Court. Consequently, it has renewed the debate around term limits for SCOTUS justices. As it is now, not only is holding them accountable for their acts extremely difficult, but appointment to the Supreme Court is a lifelong tenure.
The latest ProPublica story came as Thomas and the Supreme Court are already under heightened scrutiny from Congress and outside groups over ethics concerns. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday in which Democrats, in particular, slammed the court for a series of recent stories questioning disclosure practices.
But the debate over ethics at the Supreme Court has also become increasingly partisan, and Republican senators at the hearing accused Democrats of highlighting the ethics issues as a way to delegitimize a court that handed down several controversial and conservative opinions on abortion, guns and religion in recent years. In short, the GOP is trying to discredit any scrutiny of Thomas by labeling it a form of political revenge.
In response to the initial ProPublica story about travel, Thomas said he was “advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable.” He said he has “endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.”
Crow’s office responded with a statement asserting that his family has supported many scholarships and blamed “partisan political interests” for trying to turn an effort to help “at-risk youth” into something “nefarious.”
However, Thomas and his wife Ginni have also accepted many other acts of “generosity” by Crow for decades.
It is not surprising then, that the cumulative weight of all this “generosity” from a “friend” to a Supreme Court Justice is being questioned, especially as new revelations like the current one seem to emerge in little bits and pieces and Thomas hides behind the often-repeated defense that he was advised that it was not mandatory to report them.
