A bombshell ProPublica report reveals Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been treated to years of luxury vacations by billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow.

The ProPublica multimedia and interactive essay opens with three attention-grabbing claims: “He goes on cruises in far-flung locales on Crow’s yacht, flies on his private jet, and keeps company with Crow’s powerful friends at the billionaire’s private resort.”

Per ProPublica:

Quote
For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

These luxury vacations are contrary to what Thomas previously said, stating that he loves traveling through good old-fashioned RV parks. He loves a good Walmart parking lot. It isn't that he doesn't enjoy Europe, it's that he really just loves America. Joy Reid discussed this on her MSNBC show:



ProPublica reports that they “uncovered the details of Thomas’ travel by drawing from flight records, internal documents distributed to Crow’s employees and interviews with dozens of people ranging from his superyacht’s staff to members of the secretive Bohemian Club to an Indonesian scuba diving instructor.”

Thomas has responded to the bombshell report saying that he had previously been advised he did not have to disclose such gifts from personal friends, but due to newly adopted guidelines would do so in the future and is shocked. Thomas is also shocked to learn after all these decades that anonymous colleagues and miscellaneous denizens of the Judicial Branch might have steered him wrong.

The Los Angeles Times wrote that Thomas had accepted expensive gifts and private plane trips paid for by prominent Republican donor Crow twenty years ago in 2004. Then suddenly, Thomas stopped reporting the "gifts."

“Justice Thomas and Ginni never asked for any of this hospitality,” Crow said in a statement to ProPublica.

Sure, Republican donor friends who like Clarence for Clarence and simply feel honored that Thomas' elevation to the Supreme Court 30 years ago brought him into their rarified orbit. These same folks would have loved to be friends with Thomas even if he were still simply an anonymous federal bureaucrat heading up the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as he once was.

Contrarian, extraordinaire