Clarence Thomas says guidelines were followed after a report revealed vacations funded by a billionaire.
Image source, Getty ImagesUS Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has said he believed luxury trips taken with a billionaire Republican donor followed guidelines.
A ProPublica report earlier this week said Mr Thomas had accepted vacations from real estate mogul Harlan Crow nearly every year for two decades.
Supreme Court justices are required to file annual disclosures of gifts.
Mr Thomas said that he had been led to believe that “this sort of personal hospitality” did not apply.
According to ProPublica, the trips included several on Mr Crow’s luxury yacht and private plane, as well as a week spent every summer in the Adirondack mountains.
One trip, to Indonesia in 2019, may have cost as much as $500,000 (£402,725), according to the non-profit news website.
In a statement on Friday, Mr Thomas said that he had sought “guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary” and was told that “that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable”.
“I have endeavoured to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines,” the statement added.
Mr Thomas described Mr Crow and his wife Kathy Crow as “among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years”.
BBC News has not independently verified ProPublica’s reporting, which sought to contrast Mr Thomas’s public comments with lavish details of the trips and gifts.
“I prefer RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that,” he told a documentary about his life. “I come from regular stock and I prefer that – I prefer being around that.”
Mr Crow, a leading donor to Republican and conservative political causes in the US, told ProPublica that the trips with Mr Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas were “no different from the hospitality that we have extended to many other dear friends.”
“Justice Thomas and Ginni never asked for any of this hospitality,” the statement said.
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The statement from Mr Crow added that court cases were “never discussed” on the trips and that he is unaware of any attempts by other guests “lobbying or seeking to influence Justice Thomas on any cases”.
“I would never invite anyone who I believe had any intention of doing that,” he said. “These are gatherings of friends.”
Following the ProPublica report, several Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation into Mr Thomas and for a stricter code of conduct for Supreme Court Justices.
“This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corrupting is shocking – almost cartoonish,” New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter. “Thomas must be impeached”.
The process of impeaching a Supreme Court judge is the same as that used to impeach other officials, and begins with the House of Representatives drafting articles of impeachment.
While only a narrow majority is needed to impeach a federal judge in the House, a conviction in the Senate would require a two-thirds majority.
The current 50-50 split in the Senate between Republicans and Democrats means that a conviction is extremely unlikely.
Mr Thomas is one of six conservative-leaning justices of the nine-member Supreme Court.
The recent report is not the first time that Mr Thomas’ private trips had come under scrutiny.
In 2004, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mr Thomas had accepted gift and private jet flights from Mr Crow, including a $15,000 Abraham Lincoln bust and $19,000 Bible that once belonged to 19th Century US black activist Frederick Douglass. Mr Thomas declined to comment at the time.
Last year, Mr Thomas also came under intense criticism after it emerged that he did not recuse himself from election-related cases after it was revealed that Ginni Thomas repeatedly urged Trump White House staff to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Mrs Thomas later told the congressional committee investigating the 6 January riot at the US Capitol that she regretted “all those texts” and claimed she was “probably just emoting” during an “emotional time”.