A running list of Clarence Thomas' controversies
From lavish undisclosed vacations gifted by billionaires to conflicts of interest involving his wife, Thomas has become the face of judicial ethics reform
Congress carries America's wallet and the executive branch controls the nation's military and most of its law enforcement tools, but the Supreme Court's power is tied to its perceived legitimacy. And while most members of the Supreme Court inevitably have skeletons in their closets, Justice Clarence Thomas has had even more than his fair share of controversies. Unlike other federal judges, Supreme Court justices had no formal code of ethics until 2023 — and the main reason they adopted these (largely voluntary) rules at all is because of Thomas.
Luxury vacations from billionaire benefactors
The value of these trips "is difficult to measure" but "likely in the millions," ProPublica said. And Thomas disclosed none of it on his financial disclosure forms, which some people might argue violates the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.
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"In my career I don't remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody," former federal judge Jeremy Fogel, who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges' financial disclosures, said to ProPublica. "I think it's unprecedented."
Even before ProPublica's reporting, Thomas had "engaged in a yearslong pattern of behaving in ways that other justices, and many elected politicians, do not," said The New York Times. "From 1998 through 2003, Thomas accepted $42,200 in gifts, making him the top gift recipient on the court at the time" by about $36,000. After the Los Angeles Times highlighted these gifts in 2004, Thomas stopped reporting them on his financial disclosure forms.
Thomas was "advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable," the justice said in a statement in 2023. He later "endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure."
Senate Judiciary Democrats in June 2024 disclosed three more unreported private jet trips gifted to Thomas by Crow, and revealed another two Crow-financed trips in a final report in December 2024. The senators said they only learned about the travel after threatening to subpoena Crow.
Selling mother's home to Crow
Thomas also failed to report in 2014 that Crow bought three properties he and his family owned in Savannah, Georgia — including the house Thomas' elderly mother lives in, ProPublica said. As part of the deal, the mother, Leola Williams, was "given an occupancy agreement to be able to live in the home for the rest of her life," CNN said. "She lives rent-free but is responsible for paying the property taxes and insurance."
Crow was at one point interested in turning the house into a museum honoring "the boyhood home of a great American," the benefactor told The Dallas Morning News in 2023. Thomas still had to report the sale, Gabe Roth, who heads the advocacy group Fix the Court, said to CNN. "That's the law — even if Justice Thomas lost money, and even if the sale was to build a museum one day."
Private school tuition from Crow
Thomas and his wife, Ginni, became legal guardians of his grandnephew Mark Martin in 1998 and raised him "as a son," Thomas said, from age 6 to 19. And when Thomas decided to send his ward to private boarding school for high school, Crow picked up the tab for at least two years, at a cost of more than $100,000, ProPublica said. He did not report the gifted tuition on his disclosure forms.
The Ginni Thomas texts non-recusal
Ginni Thomas, long involved in Republican politics, became a prominent conservative activist when she joined the Heritage Foundation as a White House liaison in 2000 and then founded a Tea Party organization, Liberty Central, in 2009 — with $500,000 from Harlan Crow, Politico said in 2011.
Her partisan activism became especially awkward when she became involved in the legal battle to keep President Donald Trump in power after his 2020 loss. Her efforts, which later came to light, included text messages imploring Trump's then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to fight the defeat, and constituted an evident conflict of interest for her husband, when those legal challenges inevitably ended up at the Supreme Court. But Justice Thomas did not recuse himself. And he sided with Trump in at least two related cases, including casting the lone dissenting vote in January 2022 when the Supreme Court ordered that Trump White House insurrection-related documents be turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 siege.
A "casual observer might assume" the couple was "working in tandem, with Clarence handling the law and Ginni working on the political side," said Slate, though this has not been proven. "They aren't particularly subtle about it."
Secret contracting payments for Ginni Thomas
Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged $80,000 to $100,000 in secret consulting payments for Ginni Thomas in 2011 and 2012, telling GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway the billing paperwork should have "no mention of Ginni, of course," The Washington Post said. Leo told Conway to bill a nonprofit he advised, the Judicial Education Project, and funnel the money to Thomas' business, Liberty Consulting.
Leo — whose network of nonprofits have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on getting conservative judges on federal courts — told the Post that Ginni Thomas' work for him "did not involve anything connected with either the [Supreme] Court's business or with other legal issues," and he kept her name off the paperwork because "knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni."
The luxury RV loan
Clarence Thomas bought his dream recreational vehicle, a used Prevost Le Mirage XL Marathon, for $267,230 in 1999 — but he didn't pay for it, The New York Times said in August 2023. Instead, he borrowed the money from a longtime friend, Anthony Welters, and there's no record he ever paid back anything but interest on the loan, or paid the taxes necessary if Welters forgave the quarter-million dollars.
Welters lent Thomas the money to buy the RV, and the 7.5% interest-only loan "was satisfied" in 2008, he told the Times. He didn't elaborate any further. But none of the documents Welters handed over "indicated that Thomas ever made payments" in excess of the "annual interest on the loan," Senate Finance Committee Democrats said in a report, and Thomas did not disclose the forgiven debt on his 2008 financial disclosure report.
Thomas hinted he would quit as largesse began
A month after he bought the luxury RV, "Thomas was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and becoming increasingly frustrated with his financial standing," and his complaints about his salary left conservative Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) "worried that Thomas might step down," Politico said in December 2023.
Thomas started privately lobbying Congress for higher judicial salaries "just as he was developing his relationships with a set of wealthy benefactors" from whom he "accepted a stream of gifts" apparently "unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court," ProPublica said. And "around 2000, chatter that Thomas was dissatisfied about money circulated through conservative legal circles and on Capitol Hill."
"His importance as a conservative was paramount," Stearns said to ProPublica. "We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly."
Koch brothers dealings
While Thomas' dealings with Crow have been well documented, his alleged relationship with the billionaire Koch brothers has not garnered as much attention. But Thomas has "secretly participated in donor events staged by the hard-right Koch network," said The Guardian, attending dealings with the Kochs "at least twice" at the exclusive Bohemian Grove resort in California. The allegations on Thomas' Koch connections, which ProPublica reported in 2023, gave even more insight into the "justice’s proliferating ethics scandals."
Unsurprisingly, Democrats were quick to lambast Thomas. The justice's "gaggle of fawning billionaires expands and their influence on the court grows larger," Sen Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a statement. Durbin pushed for Thomas to recuse himself from ongoing cases at that time, noting the Koch brothers had "invested tremendous capital" in right wing causes.
Both Thomas and the Koch brothers denied wrongdoing. "The idea that attending a couple events to promote a book or give dinner remarks, as all the justices do, could somehow be undue influence just doesn’t hold water," a spokesperson for the Kochs said.
