New reports of additional undisclosed gifts raise questions about the accuracy of Justice Thomas’s latest financial disclosure amendment and why he has not further amended his prior disclosure reports
Washington, DC – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, and Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, sent a letter to the Judicial Conference on the status of the investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s omissions of billionaire-funded gifts and income from his legally required annual financial disclosure reports.
In the letter to the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, who also serves as Secretary of the Judicial Conference, Whitehouse and Johnson asked for an update on the Conference’s decision on whether to refer Justice Thomas’s undisclosed gift program to the Attorney General to determine whether the omissions were willful. The members also ask for more information on why Justice Thomas recently amended a prior return to include some, but not all, previously undisclosed gifts that were publicly reported on last year, and on the Judicial Conference’s clarification of the personal hospitality loophole, which Justice Thomas has claimed is a new rule, to avoid cleaning up years of false financial filings.
“Congress created the Judicial Conference by statute, funds the Judicial Conference through appropriations, and enacted the ethics laws the Judicial Conference administers, and so has an obvious interest in overseeing these matters,” wrote Whitehouse and Johnson. “Please advise us when the Conference might publish its report on its March 2024 proceedings, and please provide as much information as possible about the Conference’s and the Committee on Financial Disclosure’s activities related to Justice Thomas’s disclosures, including whatever you can provide related to the ‘willfulness’ and ‘clarification’ determinations.”
Documents obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee and released last week revealed new travel and other gifts that Justice Thomas has failed to disclose to date, and called into question the accuracy of the details Justice Thomas had already publicly disclosed. An appendix to Whitehouse and Johnson’s letter lists the publicly reported but not yet disclosed gifts and income provided to Justice Thomas by billionaire benefactors.
Whitehouse and Johnson first asked the Judicial Conference to refer Justice Thomas to the Attorney General for investigation in April 2023 after reporting from ProPublica exposed Justice Thomas’s long record of accepting undisclosed gifts from the politically active right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow. Whitehouse and Johnson have since urged the Conference to consider the full breadth of secret billionaire-funded gifts to Justice Thomas as support for referral to Attorney General. Whitehouse has also written to the Judicial Conference to ask for additional details on previous 2011 referrals of potentially unlawful conduct by Justice Thomas.
Whitehouse and Johnson’s Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act was advanced by the Senate Judiciary Committee last July. The bill would require Supreme Court justices to adopt a binding code of conduct, create a mechanism to investigate alleged violations of the code of conduct and other laws, improve disclosure and transparency when a justice has a connection to a party or amicus before the Court, end the practice of justices ruling on their own conflicts of interests, and require justices to explain their recusal decisions to the public. A group of Republicans blocked a unanimous consent request to pass the bill through the Senate last week.
The text of the letter is below and a PDF of the letter is available here.
June 17, 2024
The Honorable Robert Conrad
Director
Administrative Office of United States Courts
One Columbus Circle NE
Washington, DC 20544
Dear Director Conrad:
We write to request an update on financial disclosure omissions by Justice Thomas that were referred to the Judicial Conference’s Committee on Financial Disclosure. In his disclosure for 2023, Justice Thomas retroactively reported gifts of food and lodging that Harlan and Kathy Crow provided in 2019, some related to a trip to Indonesia. These omissions were publicly reported more than a year ago. The Senate Judiciary Committee has recently reported additional omissions disclosed by Harlan Crow.
We brought Justice Thomas’s financial disclosure omissions to the Judicial Conference’s attention in April 2023, and asked that the Judicial Conference refer the matter to the Attorney General to determine whether the omissions were willful. We have continued to update the Conference as evidence of additional undisclosed gifts emerged. We attach our current list of publicly reported but not yet disclosed gifts and income as an appendix to this letter.
The new information provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee includes gifts by Harlan Crow of undisclosed private jet and yacht travel from 2017, 2019 and 2021 (including on dates inconsistent with Justice Thomas’s recent amended disclosure).[1] The plain text of the Ethics in Government Act has long been understood to require gifts of travel to be disclosed because transportation is not listed in the “personal hospitality” definition and therefore can never be considered “statutory” personal hospitality.[2] The Conference’s March 23, 2023 letter to Senator Whitehouse expressly referred to the Conference’s recent personal hospitality guidance as a “clarification,” and we urge you to clarify that is indeed what you meant, as Justice Thomas has declared it a ‘new rule,” allowing him to avoid amending past misfilings.
The Judicial Conference’s September 2023 meeting report suggested that the Committee on Financial Disclosure had been looking into these matters. Your office’s letter dated February 12, 2024 stated that “[a]ctions and recommendations taken by [the Committee on Financial Disclosure] will be reported to the Conference,” and that the report published after each Judicial Conference session “details actions taken.” We look forward to the report of the Conference’s March 2024 meeting, to know whether the Committee or Conference has acted to address these issues.
Congress created the Judicial Conference by statute, funds the Judicial Conference through appropriations, and enacted the ethics laws the Judicial Conference administers, and so has an obvious interest in overseeing these matters. Please advise us when the Conference might publish its report on its March 2024 proceedings, and please provide as much information as possible about the Conference’s and the Committee on Financial Disclosure’s activities related to Justice Thomas’s disclosures, including whatever you can provide related to the “willfulness” and “clarification” determinations.
Your answers to the following questions would help inform our understanding of these matters, and the potential need for a legislative response.
- Has the Committee on Financial Disclosure concluded its review of the various financial disclosure omissions by Justice Thomas that were referred to the Committee? If so, what were the findings and results of that review?
- Has the Judicial Conference taken any actions with respect to the Committee on Financial Disclosure’s review of financial disclosure omissions by Justice Thomas? If so, what were they?
- Did the Committee on Financial Disclosure request that Justice Thomas amend his 2019 financial disclosure form to include the newly reported gifts from Harlan and Kathy Crow? Was the Committee made aware of the gifts just disclosed by Mr. Crow to the Senate Judiciary Committee? Can you explain why those gifts were not disclosed in Justice Thomas’s recent amended filing?
- Please describe the Committee on Financial Disclosure’s fact-finding process with respect to undisclosed gifts potentially covered by the Judicial Conference’s disclosure guidance.
- Has the Committee on Financial Disclosure made any determination on the “clarification” question, or otherwise requested that Justice Thomas fully update past financial disclosures to include omitted gifts and income?
- What is the status of the determination regarding reasonable cause to believe any of Justice Thomas’s various omissions were willful?
- Was Justice Thomas advised that amending his disclosures for 2019 would end the inquiry into whether reasonable cause exists to believe any omissions were willful, and was he advised in 2012 that amending his disclosures then would end that inquiry into his disclosure omissions? Is the Conference allowing retroactive amendments to obviate making that “reasonable cause” determination?
Thank you for your attention to these matters.
Sincerely,
[1] Harlan Crow Travel Information, Senate Judiciary Committee, https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024-06-13%20REDACTED%20Crow%20Materials%20for%20distribution.pdf.
[2] 5 U.S.C. § 13104(2)(A) (“[E]xcept that any food, lodging, or entertainment received as personal hospitality of an individual need not be reported.”).
