WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged Thursday that he took three trips last year aboard a private plane owned by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow even as he rejected criticism over his failure to report trips in previous years.
Crow also purchased the house in Georgia where Thomas’s mother continues to live and paid for two years of private school tuition for a child raised by Thomas and his wife, Ginni. Supreme Court justices do not have a binding code of ethics and have resisted the idea that they adopt one or have one imposed on them by Congress. In the spring, all nine justices signed a statement of ethics that Chief Justice John Roberts provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Roberts has acknowledged that the justices can do more to address ethical concerns.
“The attacks on Justice Thomas are nothing less than ridiculous and dangerous, and they set a terrible precedent for political blood sport through federal ethics filings,” Berke said. “Justice Thomas’s amended report answers — and utterly refutes— the charges trumped up in this partisan feeding frenzy.”
Stephen Gillers, whose advice has been sought by now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer, said in an email, “The failure to report private plane travel paid by a corporate donor has always been a glaring omission in the Thomas filings.”
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