Justice Thomas Did Not Disclose Additional Trips, Democrats Say

The revelation was included in a report by Democratic staff members on the Senate Judiciary Committee who had conducted a 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court.


Justice Clarence Thomas had not disclosed the trips from a billionaire patron, even after refiling some of his past financial forms. Erin Schaff/The New York Times

By Charlie Savage
Charlie Savage writes about legal policy. He reported from Washington.
Dec. 21, 2024 Updated 12:32 p.m. ET

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two additional trips from a billionaire patron that had not previously come to light, Senate Democrats revealed on Saturday after conducting a 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court. ... The findings were part of a 93-page report released by Democratic staff members of the Judiciary Committee along with about 800 pages of documents. It said the two trips, both of which had been previously unknown to the public, took place in 2021 and were provided by Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate in Texas and a frequent patron of Justice Thomas’s.

One trip took place that July by private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, N.Y., where Justice Thomas stayed at Mr. Crow’s upstate retreat for five days. The other came in October, when Mr. Crow hosted Justice Thomas overnight in New York on his yacht after flying him from the District of Columbia to New Jersey for the dedication of a statue.

The disclosures were one of the few new revelations in a report that otherwise largely summarized information about largess accepted by justices — and failures to disclose it — that had already become public. Justice Thomas had not disclosed the trips, even after refiling some of his past financial forms, and the committee learned about them through a subpoena to Mr. Crow, the report said.

In a posting on X on Saturday, Mark Paoletta, a friend of Justice Thomas’s, dismissed the report as “pathetic.” Mr. Paoletta, a former top lawyer for the White House budget office in the last Trump administration who is set to reprise that role in the next one, has offered public defenses of the justice amid scrutiny of his ties to Mr. Crow.

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