(Photo by Aude Guerrucci-Pool/Getty Images)
Last week, we learned that Clarence Thomas has hoovered up around $6 million in gifts or suspected gifts. Fix the Court tallied everything up and Thomas had taken the lion’s share of the — can we officially use the term graft at this point? — to the tune of $5.9 million of the roughly $6.6 million total across the justices.
Which is bad enough, but certainly there can’t be anything else?
Tapper: Breaking, right now, Senator Durbin says Justice Clarence Thomas took several additional free trips on the private plane of GOP megadonor, Harlan crow. Durbin says Thomas did not disclose these additional trips.. pic.twitter.com/qVngH2a6vk
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 13, 2024
These latest revelations appear to be the fruit of a deal reached between the Senate Judiciary Committee and one of Thomas’s favorite sugar daddies, Harlan Crow. Crow and his attorneys at Gibson Dunn had flirted with contempt of Congress charges for months, but apparently just reached a deal to turn over years worth of documents in exchange for letting Crow walk away.
While Thomas dragging the Supreme Court’s reputation into a deeper morass of ethical violations isn’t exactly surprising, the fact that he failed to include these trips in the already massive tally of previously undisclosed shenanigans is a little surprising. He knew the Judiciary Committee was trying to get its hands on Crow’s documents — at the very least Thomas should’ve called Crow to make sure he wasn’t overlooking anything on his end. Or, more formally, had his lawyers write Crow’s lawyers and get whatever receipts the guy had lying around before they almost inevitably ended up in the Senate’s hands.
Because now there’s zero reason to believe we’ve plumbed the depths of the corruption here. Someone recently noted that Abe Fortas lost out on the Chief Justice gig and had to resign in disgrace for taking the equivalent of $166,000 as a retainer from a client while sitting on the Court. Clarence is just around 35 times over that mark.
So far…
Earlier: Clarence Thomas’s Corruption Finally Has A Price Tag
Harlan Crow’s Lawyers Double Down On Genius Strategy To Invite Contempt Charges
Harlan Crow’s Lawyers Tell Senate They’re Going To Take Their Chances With Contempt
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
