All the major events, in timeline form.
Yet another ProPublica report, this one on Thursday, reinforced how much Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his family have benefited from billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow’s largess.
And yet again, it’s something we’re only learning about now because Thomas and Crow declined to disclose it.
ProPublica reported that Crow paid $6,200 in monthly private boarding school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, whom Thomas had had custody of since the child was 6 and raised as a son. While the total amount isn’t clear, it calculated it could be more than $150,000.
A friend of Thomas’s, Mark Paoletta, said in a statement Thursday that Thomas didn’t have to disclose the tuition because Thomas’s grandnephew didn’t meet the relevant ethics law’s definition of “dependent child.” ProPublica cited experts who said the payments should have been disclosed because they were essentially gifts to Thomas, who would otherwise have paid the tuition.
Regardless, this disclosure adds to a growing tab of Thomas-related spending by Crow that stretches into the millions. Crow has reportedly spent money on numerous luxury trips for Thomas, on Thomas’s wife’s political group, on Thomas’s mother’s house, on his grandnephew’s boarding school, and on library and museum projects around where Thomas grew up. In each case, these things were obscured before someone unearthed them.
What the new reporting also adds is another example of something Thomas once disclosed but then decided not to — even as questions about his disclosures have followed him for years. While Thomas reported a $5,000 education gift from other friends for his grandnephew in 2002, he didn’t disclose the tuition from Crow late that decade. He disclosed luxury travel and gifts from Crow before he stopped doing so amid media scrutiny in 2004.
Similarly, Thomas declined to report his 2014 real estate deal with Crow despite having dealt with the relevant disclosure law just three years before and acknowledging he had failed to comply with it. (As then, Thomas will reportedly amend his reports.)
It’s a lot to sort through, and the timeline is important. So below is what we know so far about not just these matters, but other ethics questions that have followed Thomas.
1991: Thomas is confirmed as a Supreme Court justice after contentious hearings featuring allegations of sexual harassment from Anita Hill.
1996: Crow meets Thomas for the first time in Washington and invites him on a private flight back to Dallas, according to a recent interview given by Crow. (Thomas was due to speak at an event in the area.) The two men bonded on the plane, Crow said.
