Megayachts, private jets…Clarence Thomas, the most conservative of the U.S. Supreme Court justices, says he’s had several luxury stays for more than two decades from a billionaire known for donating to the Republican Party. The press release was released Thursday.
Reaction to what was seen as raising ethical questions quickly escalated to Democrats, with one elected official calling for his immediate resignation.
ProPublica, an online investigative magazine, says it interviewed “dozens of people” and examined internal documents to prove the magistrate accepted these large sums without declaring them from businessman Harlan Crowe.
“Stunning” revelations, assessed a press release from the association Fix the Court, which campaigns for reform of the Supreme Court, the temple of American law.
According to him, this confirms the need to establish strict rules on gifts received by its members.
The friendship between the court’s most senior judge and the real estate mogul was already the subject of a 2011 New York Times article that described it as “unusual and ethically sensitive.”
It’s not the first time Mr Thomas’ name has been linked to controversy: his wife Ginny, a lobbyist and activist, has joined Donald Trump’s crusade to prove — wrongly — that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
After revealing the SMS and emails she sent for this purpose, the Left called on her husband to recuse himself from any election file, citing an apparent conflict of interest.
Nominated by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991, he was confirmed despite allegations of sexual harassment by a former aide. He has always denied them, saying he was the victim of a “high-tech murder”.
In its investigation, ProPublica noted that Clarence Thomas visited the businessman’s property in the Adirondacks of New York state almost every summer, and that he attended an elite all-male club in California called “Bohemian Grove.” .
Left-wing lawmaker Hank Johnson tweeted, “Justice Thomas must resign immediately to save the people’s respect for the Supreme Court of the United States.”
For his part, influential Democratic Senator Dick Durbin insisted that “the highest court in the land should not have low ethical standards.”
The revelations “show, once again, that Supreme Court justices, like all other federal judges, should be held to a binding code of conduct,” he said. “ProPublica Article Calls to Action, Senate Judiciary Committee Acts.”
The magistrate’s statements resurfaced on Thursday in a documentary that portrayed himself as a man of the people.
“I have no problem going to Europe, but I like America (…), I like to cross the countryside,” he said. “I like motorhomes. I like Walmart (supermarket) parking lots more than beaches and stuff like that.”
