Clarence Thomas Luxury Gift Report Prompts Ethics Code Talk (1)

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin said his panel “will act” following a report revealing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted luxury trips from a Dallas-based GOP donor.

The Illinois Democrat said the ProPublica report, which detailed gifts of trips on private yachts and jets and luxury accommodations over two decades, shows the high court needs a statutory code of conduct.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during the formal group photograph at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Oct. 7, 2022.

Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg

Thomas never reported the gifts, which Durbin said in a statement is “inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any public servant, let alone a Justice on the Supreme Court.”

The nine justices of the Supreme Court are the only federal judges who aren’t formally bound by a code of conduct.

Durbin called the report a “call to action.”

ProPublica reported that the trips funded by real estate magnate Harlan Crow included a 2019 “island hopping” vacation with costs that “could have exceeded $500,000,” along with travel to California’s Bohemian Grove retreat for men, and Crow’s East Texas ranch.

Ethics experts told the publication the lack of reporting about the travel appears to violate a Watergate-era law requiring justices and other federal officials to disclose most gifts they receive.

Thomas’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another Democratic senator, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, said the report will give fresh momentum to his long-standing drive for legislation that would require the Judicial Conference of the United States to create a code of ethical conduct for the Supreme Court.

“It’s no longer okay for the Supreme Court to be the only federal court without a binding ethical code,” Murphy said in a statement.

(Updates with Murphy in eighth and ninth paragraphs)

--With assistance from Greg Stohr.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net;
Emily Birnbaum in Washington at ebirnbaum3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Megan Scully at mscully32@bloomberg.net;
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Meghashyam Mali

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