The letter details “the repeated and deliberate omission of gifts and income from Judge Thomas’ financial disclosure reports required by the Government Ethics Act.” And, as the senators point out, the investigation Similar allegations have been made against other government officials on much lesser charges.
“This is not a complaint about failure to resign or bribery, although Mr. Thomas may be accused of standing by during a riot incident in which his wife played a limited role. Such prosecutions are virtually impossible, thanks to this court. Instead, the letter is about routine allegations of false statements signed under oath and tax violations.”
The list of issues is shocking, including the forgiveness of $267,000 in loan principal that was not reported as income. (“According to documents obtained by the Senate Finance Committee, the loan principal was never repaid and Judge Thomas paid only the interest on the loan before all loan payments were suspended. Forgiven or forgiven debt is taxable income, and the Government Ethics Act requires judges to disclose ‘income from forgiven debt.'”) This was never listed on Thomas’ financial disclosure report. Thomas refused to say whether he included the loan forgiveness on his income taxes.
Then there are the gifts. And there are gifts galore. The senators list “undisclosed gifts from other wealthy donors…private jet trips from Paul Anthony Novelly, private jet trips and country club memberships from the late Wayne Huizinga, and private jet trips, luxury sports tickets, and ranch stays from David Sokol.” The senators attach an appendix detailing these lavish touches. “Judge Thomas has asserted that some omissions were ‘inadvertent’ and has revised parts of his past reports accordingly. However, Judge Thomas has not disclosed all of the gifts that came to light, and there may be more,” the senators write. Thus, they charge, “His long history of omissions indicates a willful pattern that merits investigation under the Government Ethics Act.”
Additionally, Whitehouse said, there were gifts from Leonard Leo, a right-wing lawyer and former vice president of the Federalist Society who helped select Supreme Court justices and engineered cases before the court to further the agenda of his dark money ring.
Last year, The Washington Post reported that Leo directed payments of at least $25,000 to a consulting firm run by Justice Thomas’ spouse, and that documents relating to the payments were “[n]Mrs. Thomas is not “mentioned.” The secrecy of the payments raises further questions about the extent to which such payments were planned, whether legitimate services were actually provided, and whether such payments should have required additional reporting by Justice Thomas. We have not yet been able to fully investigate whether any or all of these undisclosed gifts were part of a systematic program of gift-giving as rewards to recipient judges.
In essence, the senators are raising allegations of deliberate false statements in government disclosure documents and income and gift tax violations. At this stage, these are merely allegations. But there is certainly grounds for further investigation, the senators argue. After detailing other investigations of less egregious conduct, the senators argue that only a special counsel can conduct an adequate investigation. (“Because no party brings litigation to the Supreme Court more frequently than the United States government, which the Department of Justice represents, the Department of Justice is naturally hesitant to upset members of the Supreme Court.”)
The senator is not alone in making these allegations: In April 2023, after ProPublica reported that Thomas had received large gifts from another billionaire, Harlan Crow, the anti-corruption group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Garland.
In the letter, CREW and several ethics experts wrote, “If true, Justice Thomas’ acceptance of these gifts and transactions and his failure to report them on his annually required financial disclosure form not only undermines confidence in his ability to perform his duties as a Supreme Court Justice fairly and impartially, but also threatens to erode public confidence in the institution of the Supreme Court.” CREW President Noah Bookbinder told me the organization had not received a response.
Richard Painter, one of the ethics experts who signed the letter, told me, “It is up to the attorney general to appoint a special counsel. I believe that is warranted in this case.” If Garland does not appoint a special counsel, or Any investigation would conclude that Supreme Court justices operate in a world of impunity, confident that a partisan Senate, like the president in the new system of government this Court has created, will never remove them from their seats.
“Justice Thomas’ serious and repeated misconduct, including his consistent failure to report large gifts from wealthy benefactors with vested interests in the Court’s work and his repeated failure to recuse himself from cases in which he had clear conflicts of interest, require a thorough investigation and real accountability,” Bookbinder told me.
The Thomas case arose from the refusal to adopt a mandatory code of ethics for the Supreme Court and to give justices lifetime security, which made the rule of law dependent on the good faith of the justices themselves to maintain their ethics, something that has clearly proven insufficient.
So the White House and Wyden had no choice but to ask the Justice Department to do its job. “This request is fundamental to the rule of law,” constitutional law scholar Dennis Aftergut told me. “Many would not expect Garland to comply with this request before the election, but if our democracy is to last until November, senators have written the final policy for what must happen to rid the judiciary of corruption.”
Unfortunately, if felon and former President Donald Trump is elected, there will almost certainly not be an investigation, so Garland must act quickly or else there will once again be justice delayed and justice denied.
