Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas disclosed that he received four free trips last year as new questions emerged about President Biden’s recent stay at billionaire Tom Steyer’s Lake Tahoe home.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas disclosed Thursday that he received four free trips last year — three of them from billionaire Harlan Crow — as new questions emerged about President Biden’s recent stay at billionaire Tom Steyer’s Lake Tahoe home.
Crow, a real estate developer and Republican donor, paid for Thomas’ travel to American Enterprise Institute conferences in Dallas last February and May and hosted the justice at his Adirondacks home for a week in July, according to the annual financial disclosure filing.
The Hatch Center covered Thomas’ transportation and lodging costs for a March speech in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Steyer, who invests in environmentally friendly companies as Biden steers federal policy and funding toward green-energy initiatives, purportedly rented his lakefront mansion to the extended Biden family for nine days earlier this month after the president took heat for repeatedly staying for free at the homes of wealthy Democrats and failing to disclose the stays on annual ethics forms.
Crow has no known business before the Supreme Court, but his gifts of free trips to Thomas have received sustained coverage and criticism this year following an investigative series by ProPublica, prompting ethics filings against the longest-serving Supreme Court justice and calls for his impeachment from congressional Democrats who denounced the gifts as unethical.
Thomas’ defenders say he complied with judicial disclosure policies as they existed at the time and note that Biden has routinely failed to disclose free vacation stays at the homes of benefactors who have more apparent potential conflicts of interest.
In Biden’s case, the donors generally aren’t home when he vacations at their abodes.
Federal reporting laws have an exception for personal hospitality for lodging — meaning that officials don’t have to report if a homeowner is hosting them as a guest — and Thomas’ defenders say there was a lack of clarity on disclosing connected transportation, which they argue was treated as part of that exception under a policy described in 2006 by the then-chairman of the Judicial Codes of Conduct Committee.
Thomas disclosed the four 2022 trips after the Judicial Conference changed reporting guidance in March of this year.
