Supreme Court docket Justice Clarence Thomas bought tens of millions in presents
(L-R) U.S. Supreme Court docket Chief Justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Samuel Alito attend Decide Neil Gorsuch’s judicial oath ceremony within the Rose Backyard on the White Home April 10, 2017 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Photos Information | Getty Photos
Supreme Court docket Justice Clarence Thomas accepted tens of millions of {dollars}’ value of presents over the previous 20 years on the bench, a complete practically 10 occasions the worth of all presents acquired by his fellow justices throughout the identical time, in keeping with a new analysis.
Thomas acquired 103 presents with a complete worth of greater than $2.4 million between 2004 and 2023, the judicial reform group Fix the Court stated in a report Thursday.
In distinction, Thomas’ fellow justices over the identical interval accepted a complete of simply 93 presents value a mixed worth of solely about $248,000, in keeping with the nonprofit group.
Thomas’ fellow conservative justice Samuel Alito accounted for the lion’s share of that worth. Repair the Court docket’s evaluation discovered that Alito accepted 16 presents value a mixed $170,095.
Repair the Court docket recognized one other 101 “seemingly presents” — with a complete estimated worth of virtually $1.8 million —that Thomas acquired within the type of free journeys and lodging from billionaire businessman Harlan Crow, and on the unique Bohemian Grove membership.
Counting these presents, Thomas’ whole two-decade haul is valued at practically $4.2 million.
Repair the Court docket’s evaluation is basically based mostly on investigative reporting by the media outlet ProPublica over the previous yr, which has been targeted on Thomas and Alito and which has sparked requires ethics reform on the Supreme Court docket.
The group additionally factored in knowledge from the Congressional Document, the justices’ annual monetary disclosures, different information sources, and its personal regulation clerk-led analysis.
The worth and variety of presents Thomas acquired additionally eclipsed these accepted by eight retired or lifeless Supreme Court docket justices whose tenures overlapped his service on the courtroom, which started in 1991.
The late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who served greater than 34 years on the courtroom, acquired 73 presents till she retired in early 2006, placing her in second place behind Thomas in whole variety of presents.
However the mixed worth of O’Connor’s presents was lower than $36,000.
Antonin Scalia, a conservative justice who died in 2016 whereas on the courtroom, accepted 67 presents value about $210,000 throughout his tenure, which started in 1986.
The late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, whose profession on the courtroom spanned 33 years till 2005, accepted simply six presents, with a complete worth of lower than $13,000.
“Supreme Court docket justices shouldn’t be accepting presents, not to mention the a whole bunch of freebies value tens of millions of {dollars} they’ve acquired over time,” Repair the Court docket’s govt director, Gabe Roth, stated in a press release.
“The ethics disaster on the Court docket will not start to abate till justices undertake stricter reward acceptance guidelines,” Roth stated.
Repair the Court docket famous that the overall figures it calculated for reward values are seemingly decrease than the precise values as a result of the evaluation erred on the low finish of the price of some presents, comparable to free journey or tickets to sports activities occasions.
Its tally additionally makes some assumptions. The group assumed the price per hour of a flight on a personal airplane is $10,000, for example, and it counted every leg of a roundtrip flight as a separate reward.
The Supreme Court docket didn’t instantly reply to CNBC’s request for touch upon Repair the Court docket’s findings.
ProPublica first revealed that Thomas had accepted years of luxury trips from Republican megadonor Crow with out reporting them on his monetary disclosures, which ethics specialists stated he was required to do.
Thomas stated his judicial colleagues had instructed him that he did not have to disclose these journey bills.
The evaluation however offers fodder for the Supreme Court docket’s more and more vocal critics who’ve known as for reforms within the wake of a sequence of politically incendiary rulings and ongoing ethics scandals.
The courtroom below Chief Justice John Roberts has made some concessions, together with adopting a proper — although unenforceable — code of ethics in November.
The courtroom in that doc aimed to “dispel” the “misunderstanding” that the courtroom’s 9 justices “regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics guidelines.”
The federal judiciary, in the meantime, carried out new guidelines this yr requiring Supreme Court docket justices to reveal the worth of travel-related gifts on their monetary disclosure varieties.
