Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas thanked Senator Ted Cruz and other Republican members of Congress for defending him against ethics complaints after bombshell reporting uncovered lavish gifts he received from a prominent GOP donor while serving on the nation’s highest court.
Thomas, who appeared on the Texas senator’s podcast for a rare interview that was published Monday, called him “one of the people who actually stands up, particularly at times when others seem to wither.
“And more personally, when we — my wife and I — were under attack for obvious reasons, you and Mike Lee and some of the other friends would stand up,” Thomas said. “So I really appreciate that.”
The results of a months-long probe from ProPublica revealed previously undisclosed travel, hospitality and gifts from an influential billionaire with connections to right-wing interest groups with business before the court, including private flights, VIP passes to big-ticket sporting events, luxury vacations and resort stays.
ProPublica’s reporting in 2023 reviewed two decades of questionable gifts to Thomas from Harlan Crow, a real estate developer and Republican donor who co-founded the right-wing tax policy organization Club for Growth.
open image in galleryCrow gifted Thomas week-long luxury trips, including island-hopping on Crow’s yacht with international private jet travel, as well as a $19,000 Bible that once belonged to Frederick Douglass, ProPublica uncovered.
Crow also paid thousands of dollars in tuition for the justice’s grand-nephew to attend boarding schools and quietly paid Thomas for a property that was occupied by the justice’s mother.
The justice has defended his relationship with Crow, writing in a statement at the time that, “as friends do,” he and his wife Virginia “Ginni” Thomas joined him “on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them.”
Cruz criticized the reports as a “political smear job” at the time.
“They’re not looking at any other judges,” Cruz told Fox News in 2023. “This is a political smear job directed at Clarence Thomas, because he is an extraordinary constitutionalist.”
Later that year, the Supreme Court adopted its first-ever code of ethics in an effort to dispel “the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.”
The code “largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct” — but justices came under fire for failing to designate who, exactly, would determine if those rules had been violated.
Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who introduced legislation that would have forced the court to adopt an enforceable code of conduct, called the court’s measure a “long-overdue step” to correct its “honor system” of self-governance — but falls short of accountability.
“This is a long-overdue step by the justices, but a code of ethics is not binding unless there is a mechanism to investigate possible violations and enforce the rules,” he said in a statement at the time.
open image in galleryGinni Thomas, a conservative activist, also was at the center of investigations into the 2020 presidential election as she lobbied the White House with false claims supporting Donald Trump’s victory.
“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” she wrote in a message to then-White house chief of staff Mark Meadows. “You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
Those messages landed her in front of the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, where she denied exerting any improper influence over her husband’s work at the Supreme Court.
In 2011, Justice Thomas updated years of disclosure forms to include the fact that his wife earned more than $686,000 in income from the right-leaning Heritage Foundation between 2003 and 2007 — a discrepancy that Thomas attributed to “a misunderstanding of filing instructions.”
Thomas was confirmed to the nation’s high court in 1991 after he was nominated by then-President George H.W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall, the nation’s first Black justice.
He has been at the center of a series of controversial rulings and statements over the last decade as Trump rose to power and returned to office a second time. He joined the court’s conservatives to overturn Roe v Wade and grant the president “immunity” from criminal prosecution for “officials” acts in office. He also gave Trump legal ammunition to dismiss a federal indictment for withholding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and opened the door for challenges to voting rights and abortion drugs.
During the second Trump administration, Thomas has voted to support the president’s challenges to elections and birthright citizenship, among other landmark cases with far-reaching impacts.