Senate Democrats Find Many Ethical Lapses by Supreme Court Justices

The Washington Post / Justin Jouvenal

16:16 JST, December 22, 2024

Supreme Court justices have regularly failed to identify conflicts of interest that require their recusal and have accepted lavish gifts without reporting them, including previously undisclosed jet and yacht travel by Clarence Thomas, according to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A report released Saturday after a 20-month investigation concludes that Thomas has accepted millions of dollars in gifts during his three decades on the court, including a newly discovered flight to Saranac, New York, and a yacht trip to New York City sponsored by Texas billionaire Harlan Crow in 2021.

“The number, value, and extravagance of the gifts accepted by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history,” the report says. It notes that some of the individuals who gave to Thomas had business before the court.

The investigation also found that the Judicial Conference of the United States, the body responsible for setting guidelines and looking into lapses by federal judges, has failed to adequately address the ethical issues that have repeatedly rocked the high court, even making a change that the report says weakened judicial ethics guidelines.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said the report makes clear that Congress needs to pass an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.

“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making,” Durbin said in a statement. “It’s clear that the justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”

Committee Republicans did not participate in the investigation and did not respond to a request for comment.

Thomas and other justices did not respond to inquiries about the report, but Thomas has long said that he did not have to report many gifts because they fell under a “personal hospitality” exemption that existed at the time. Thomas has said that Crow, a prominent Republican donor, is a longtime friend.

Public approval of the Supreme Court has plummeted to record lows in recent years following controversial rulings by the justices, polarizing nomination battles, and a string of media reports that have raised questions about the ethics and conduct of some members of the court. The justices responded by adopting a new ethics code late last year, but it was widely criticized for lacking an enforcement mechanism.

A series of stories last year in ProPublica revealed that Thomas failed to disclose that Crow had paid for numerous trips, tuition for a relative and the purchase of his mother’s home. The outlet also reported that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did not make public a 2008 Alaska fishing trip paid for by other wealthy benefactors, one of whom later had business before the court.

The Associated Press reported last year that Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges to buy her books. The New York Times revealed this year that politically charged flags flew at Alito’s homes in the months after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

And in 2022, The Washington Post revealed that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Clarence Thomas, had urged Trump White House officials to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory against then-President Donald Trump, prompting calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases involving the presidential contest and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The Senate Judiciary Committee report accuses Thomas of ignoring a federal law that requires judges to disclose most gifts following a 2004 report in the Los Angeles Times that highlighted items he had received up until then, including a Bible once owned by Frederick Douglass and a bust of Abraham Lincoln.

Thomas had a conflict of interest in cases involving Jan. 6 and the 2020 presidential election because of his wife’s pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” efforts, the report says. It adds that “federal law prohibits a justice from hearing a case in which the justice’s spouse has any interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”

The investigation accused Alito of misusing the personal-hospitality exemption by claiming that the 2008 Alaska fishing trip fell into that category. The trip to a fishing lodge, which cost more than $1,000 a day, was paid for by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and lodge owner Robin Arkley II.

Alito should have recused himself from cases involving the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 riot, the report says, because an upside-down U.S. flag was flown at his Virginia home in the weeks after the attack and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was seen at his New Jersey beach house. Both flags had been embraced by Jan. 6 rioters, creating the “appearance of partiality,” according to the report.

Alito wrote in a May letter that his wife raised the upside-down flag at their home in 2021 after a neighborhood dispute. In the letter, he said he thought the incidents did not rise to the level of recusal. He went on to participate last term in cases before the high court on the presidential election and Jan. 6.

The committee also found that the judiciary was failing to police itself through the Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for the federal courts. A conference committee has been investigating Thomas’s financial reporting practices since April 2023, following a referral from congressional Democrats.

In September, the Judicial Conference tweaked the rules on the personal-hospitality exemption to clarify it, but the Senate committee Democrats concluded that the changes watered down the exemption by allowing judges to avoid reporting gifts of food, lodging or entertainment they received at certain properties owned by an entity rather than an individual. The change, the report says, seemed “more likely to absolve past misconduct and facilitate the acceptance of future largesse than strengthen judicial ethics.”

The report calls for reforms within the Judicial Conference, including adding more staff, strengthening financial disclosure guidelines for judges and changing a culture that the investigation found was not willing to meaningfully enforce its rules.

“For decades, the Judicial Conference has failed to adequately perform financial disclosure reviews, conduct investigations, and respond appropriately to ethical misconduct complaints against the justices,” the committee Democrats wrote.

Officials with the Judicial Conference declined to comment.

The Senate Judiciary Committee investigation began in the spring of 2023, sparked by ProPublica’s reporting on Thomas. The committee requested records from Crow, Arkley, conservative legal activist Leonard Leo and others. The three initially fought the records request, before Crow and Arkley eventually provided documents. Leo never complied with a committee subpoena.