“Justice Thomas Reports Wealth of Gifts” was the title of a December 2004 front-page story in the Los Angeles Times, detailing how Clarence Thomas had received gifts worth tens of thousands of dollars over the prior six years — far more than the other justices on the Supreme Court at the time.
The story appears to have marked a turning point for Thomas and his public disclosures of gifts. Since the news account was published 18 years ago, Thomas has reported receiving just two gifts, according to a Washington Post review of his financial disclosure forms posted online by nonprofit groups Fix the Court and OpenSecrets.
Thomas has come under particular scrutiny for potential conflicts of interest, in part because of the political activities of his wife, conservative leader Virginia “Ginni” Thomas. On Thursday, that scrutiny intensified: ProPublica reported that over the past two decades, Texas billionaire and conservative donor Harlan Crow repeatedly hosted the justice on his private jet, his private yacht and at his private Adirondacks retreat.
Thomas did not report most of Crow’s largesse on public financial disclosure forms — the same kinds of forms he used to report gifts before 2004. Crow told the news outlet that he had provided hospitality to the Thomases just as he had to many other friends.
In a statement Friday, Thomas cited that personal friendship.
He said that he and his wife joined Crow on various trips. “Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable,” Thomas said.
Federal judges may not accept gifts from anyone with business before the court and they must report all gifts worth more than $415, according to current rules.
The federal courts’ policymaking body, the Judicial Conference, last month quietly adopted new rules requiring justices to provide a fuller accounting of free trips, meals and other gifts they accept from corporations or other organizations. The new rules, which came as open-government advocates and congressional Democrats criticized the Supreme Court’s ethics practices, were meant to help tighten a “personal hospitality” exemption that allowed justices to avoid reporting free trips or other gifts from friends.
Thomas said in his statement that he intended to follow those rules.
One of the two gifts that Thomas reported receiving since 2004 came from Crow: a bronze bust of Frederick Douglass, valued at $6,484.12, according to Thomas’s 2015 financial disclosure.
The other gift was an award from Yale Law School, Thomas’s alma mater, that included a glass medallion and brass plaque valued at $530, his 2014 disclosure states.
Thomas’s more recent disclosures don’t stand out. Over the past five years, seven of the 11 justices who filed annual disclosures said they had not received gifts, according to a Post review. Thomas was one of them.
In its 2004 story, the Los Angeles Times reported that Thomas had disclosed a wide range of gifts including an $800 commemorative jacket from the Daytona 500 in 1999, the year he served as grand marshal for the race, to $1,200 in tires from an Omaha businessman in 2002, according to the newspaper. He also received $100 in cigars from talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and a $5,000 check to help defray the cost of his grandnephew’s education, given to him by a Florida businessman and friend, the newspaper reported.
It added that Thomas also reported receiving gifts from Crow, including a Bible that once belonged to Frederick Douglass valued at $19,000 and a free flight on Crow’s jet to the San Francisco area, where he was Crow’s guest at the private men’s retreat known as Bohemian Grove.
Thomas declined to comment for that news article.
Crow has also donated money in support of Ginni Thomas’s work, Politico reported more than a decade ago. In 2009, she founded the nonprofit Liberty Central to harness the energy of activists in the growing tea party movement. She launched the group with $500,000 from an anonymous donor, stirring questions about whether such financial support created potential conflicts of interest for her husband on the bench.
Ginni Thomas stepped down from the organization in late 2010. Politico later revealed that Crow was the donor.
Anonymous donors also provided $600,000 to fund Crowdsourcers, an obscure conservative group led by Ginni Thomas to fight what she has called a cultural war against the left, from 2019 to 2021.
Supreme Court justices regularly get reimbursed for travel, meals and lodging related to speaking events or teaching, according to a review of their disclosure forms. But they have reported receiving few gifts over the last five years, according to the review.
Only four of 11 justices who have filed Supreme Court disclosures over the last five years reported receiving gifts.
Two jurists, Sonia Sotomayor and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, reported giving prize money from organizations that had honored them to charity.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. disclosed he received an inscribed football helmet worth $579 from Mississippi federal judges in 2017.
And Justice Neil M. Gorsuch reported receiving a $699 pair of cowboy boots from a nonprofit affiliated with the Texas Supreme Court in 2021; a $500 fishing rod from someone named “Bob Todd” in 2019; and a $1,000 watercolor painting from another federal judge in 2018.
The justices’ disclosures for calendar year 2022 are expected to be released in June.