Clarence Thomas’s New Financial Disclosures Are Better Than In The Past, But Not Where They Need To Be

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(Photo by Aude Guerrucci-Pool/Getty Images)

This has been the spring and summer of Supreme Court ethics issues, as investigative reporters keep uncovering previously undisclosed financial benefits that several of the justices — but mostly Clarence Thomas — have received over the years .

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Seriously, the deep dive into Thomas’s financials has been quite the journey. ProPublica initially released an article detailing the two decades of Justice Thomas receiving travel and other gifts from billionaire Harlan Crow. A few days later, we got more details of the financial entanglement between the two men as it was revealed Crow bought from Thomas three pieces of property — including one Thomas’s mother lives on — and improved it, all with Thomas’s mother never paying rent. Then we got the news Crow paid for schooling for the family member Thomas considers like a son. He was a member of a fancy rich person club, and had bunches of billionaire friends that lavished him with pricey gifts. Even the RV Thomas uses to establish his everyman bone fides was financed by a rich buddy.

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And those required financial disclosures? Yeah, Thomas basically thumbed his nose at all that.

But now it’s time to pay the piper. Ha. LOL. Not really. After all, a lifetime appointment means never having to say you’re sorry. But after months of this thing, Thomas is finally going to make some small changes that he hopes will take the heat off. Thomas has trotted out terrible excuses for why he refused to disclose the largess already, but today’s release of his 2022 financial disclosure attempts to correct some of those past failings. Several of his previous omissions are on the new disclosure, and yet not even everything reporters have sussed out makes it onto the form. As Fix the Court’s Executive Director, Gabe Roth, notes, “What’s more, he’s chosen not to update earlier reports with details about the tuition gift, the RV loan or his countless private plane fights, all of which were reportable. It’s time for the Judicial Conference, as required by the disclosure law, to refer these issues to the Justice Department for further investigation.”

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Thomas also chose to include on the disclosure a defense of his previous, incomplete reporting. As Roth notes, “Justice Thomas’ lengthy explanation as to why he omitted various gifts and free trips on previous disclosures does not countermand his decades of willful obfuscation when it comes to his reporting requirements.”

In addition to rehashing his “my friends said it was okay” excuse, Thomas points to the Dobbs decision overturning abortion rights for the reason he *has* to take private jets.

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It’s me I’m the problem. Public forces Clarence Thomas to take private jets. https://t.co/3hFkHQ9RSm

— Dahlia Lithwick (@Dahlialithwick) August 31, 2023

Following the early leak of the Dobbs decision, the victim act is something Republicans on the Court keep coming back to. But remember this is nothing more than a smoke screen. All the leak did was push up the public’s awareness of the Dobbs decision by a month. The outrage Thomas says forced him onto private jets was *always* going to happen — because, you know, THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU STRIP PEOPLE OF THEIR RIGHTS. And if that’s too upsetting, perhaps Thomas needs to rethink his jurisprudence.

Thomas’s latest disclosure is definitely better than his previous attempts at transparency. But he can’t even manage to disclose all the benefits WE ALREADY KNOW ABOUT. He’s got to do better. Avoiding the mere appearance of impropriety demands it.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].

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Clarence Thomas, Gabe Roth, Judicial Ethics, Supreme Court