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michael bopp
'Another Day, Another Undisclosed Trip Clarence Thomas Took on a Billionaire's Private Jet': Wyden
"The Supreme Court should be the gold standard for judicial ethics," said one reform advocate, "yet billionaires like Harlan Crow are buying the loyalty of justices one private jet flight at a time."
Aug 05, 2024
New reporting on Monday that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report even more private travel gifted by a Republican mega-donor sparked renewed calls for reforms including a binding code of ethics for members of the nation's highest court.
The New York Timesreported that Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) detailed in a letter to Michael Bopp, an attorney representing billionaire businessman Harlan Crow, how Thomas "has never disclosed" round-trip travel by Thomas and his wife, conservative activist Virginia Thomas, between Hawaii and New Zealand in November 2010 on Crow's private jet.
"Furthermore, it was revealed just a few weeks ago that Justice Thomas enjoyed complimentary use of private jets paid for by Mr. Crow on 17 different occasions since 2016, with nine of those flights coming in the last three years," Wyden wrote.
"While Justice Thomas has only recently updated his financial disclosures to include an eight-day voyage aboard the Michaela Rose in Indonesia in 2019, Justice Thomas still has not disclosed other trips on the Michaela Rose," the senator continued, referring to Crow's yacht. "Public reports show evidence that Justice Thomas was a passenger aboard the Michaela Rose in Greece, New Zealand, and elsewhere."
Thomas' 2023 disclosure, which was published in June, includes food and lodging during 2019 trips to Bali and Bohemian Grove—a secretive, men-only retreat in Sonoma County, California—paid for by Crow. The trips and other gifts for Thomas—including yacht excursions, flights on private jets, and private school tuition for the justice's grandnephew—were first revealed by ProPublica last year. Thomas claimed key disclosures were "inadvertently omitted at the time of filing."
Also in June, the advocacy group Fix the Court published a database listing 546 total gifts valued at over $4.7 million given to 18 current and former justices mostly between 2004 and 2023, as identified by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The database also lists "likely" gifts received by the justices and their estimated values, bringing the grand total to 672 gifts valued at nearly $6.6 million.
Thomas led the pack with 193 FTC-identified gifts collectively valued at over $4 million. Of these, he listed only 27 in financial disclosure reports.
Wyden wrote:
I seek to understand the means and scale of Mr. Crow's undisclosed largesse to Justice Thomas to inform several pieces of legislation that the committee is drafting, including but not limited to: reforms to the tax code concerning filing requirements for gift tax returns, audit requirements for Supreme Court justices, and comprehensive ethics reform that would strengthen the Ethics in Government Act and other laws related to the disclosure of complimentary private jet and yacht travel by Supreme Court justices...
Unfortunately, your prior responses to the committee have done nothing to address concerns that personal trips aboard Mr. Crow's superyacht and private jets for lavish vacations, including complimentary private jet travel for Justice Thomas, may have been used to help Mr. Crow avoid or evade paying federal taxes. This is not a particularly complicated matter. Mr. Crow could easily clarify for the committee whether tax deductions were claimed on superyacht and private jet use by Justice Thomas, but he refuses to do so.
This is particularly troubling in light of the committee's discovery of additional lavish international travel by Justice Thomas at Mr. Crow's expense that Justice Thomas has failed to properly disclose.
Wyden's letter asks Bopp to provide financial statements for Rochelle Charter, the holding company for the Michaela Rose, and to answer questions including whether Thomas ever reimbursed Crow for the private jet trip from Hawaii to New Zealand and other travel.
Last month, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who chairs a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the federal courts and oversight, and Wyden asked the Biden administration to appoint a special counsel to investigate Thomas for alleged ethics violations.
Government ethics advocates weighed in on the new revelations.
"These new reports are as appalling as they are unsurprising," Demand Justice managing director Maggie Jo Buchanan said in a statement. "Justice Thomas' actions and—critically—[Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts'] refusal to assure the public that the court takes these never-ending revelations seriously, shows the necessity of meaningful and immediate reform."
"Trust for the Supreme Court remains at historic lows in part because the MAGA justices openly display their allegiances to wealthy billionaires and partisan interests instead of the public, whom they are meant to serve," Buchanan added. "We call on Congress to urgently pass full-scale reform, including an enforceable code of ethics as President [Joe] Biden proposed last week."
Biden called for, and Vice President Kamala Harris—who is replacing the incumbent atop the Democratic presidential ticket— endorsed reforms including term limits for Supreme Court justices, an enforceable code of ethics, and a constitutional amendment reversing the court's decision to grant presidents broad immunity for official acts.
Last year, the Supreme Court formally announced a new 14-page
code of conduct that watchdog groups dismissed as what the Revolving Door Project called a "toothless PR stunt."
Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs for the advocacy group Stand Up America, said Monday that "the Supreme Court should be the gold standard for judicial ethics, yet billionaires like Harlan Crow are buying the loyalty of justices one private jet flight at a time."
"Our nation's highest court has become a political plaything for the ultra-wealthy and well-connected," Edkins added. "Congress must step up as a co-equal branch of government and tackle the corruption plaguing the court. It's time for our leaders to restore integrity and transparency to the Supreme Court by passing a binding code of ethics and term limits."
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Durbin, Experts Rip Crow Lawyer's Claim That Senate Lacks Authority to Probe Thomas Gifts
"Harlan Crow thinks he is the law," remarked one legal expert. "The billionaire and his lawyer apparently believe they get to stop congressional investigations if they so choose."
May 23, 2023
Legal experts and U.S. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin on Tuesday derided billionaire Harlan Crow's refusal to answer the panel's questions regarding years of gifts—including luxury vacations and private school tuition—bestowed by the Republican megadonor upon Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his family.
In a letter to Durbin (D-Ill.) responding to requests for information about the private jet, yacht, and upstate New York resort owned by Crow and his holding companies, Michael Bopp of the law firm Gibson Dunn—which represents Crow—asserted that the Judiciary Committee "has not identified a valid legislative purpose for its investigation and is not authorized to conduct an ethics investigation of a Supreme Court justice."
Durbin responded to Bopp's letter with a statement arguing that the missive "did not provide a credible justification for the failure of Mr. Crow and three corporate entities to respond to the committee's written questions."
"First of all, the committee did not receive individual responses from anyone representing the three companies," Durbin said. "That is untenable since the gifts and access to justices that these companies provided are highly relevant to the committee's legislative efforts on ethics reform."
\u201cSCOOP: Here's the letter that Justice Clarence Thomas's benefactor Harlan Crow sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee last night. His lawyers, from top firm Gibson Dunn, are arguing Congress doesn't have the authority to investigate the Supreme Court.\n\nhttps://t.co/PAtQvK7a8S\u201d— Emily Birnbaum (@Emily Birnbaum) 1684861388
"Second, the letter claims that Congress lacks authority to enact ethics legislation that applies to Supreme Court justices—a claim belied by multiple congressionally enacted ethics laws that Chief Justice [John] Roberts highlighted as applying to Supreme Court justices in his April 25 'Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices,'" Durbin continued.
"Further, Mr. Crow's letter relies on a separation of powers defense when Mr. Crow does not work, and has never worked, for the Supreme Court," the senator added. "Harlan Crow believes the secrecy of his lavish gifts to Justice Thomas is more important than the reputation of the highest court of law in this land. He is wrong."
Chris Geidner, a former legal editor and Supreme Court correspondent for BuzzFeed News, wrote on his Law Dork Substack:
What is perhaps most remarkable about the letter is not even its dismissal of the congressional oversight request—which absolutely must be followed at the earliest possible moment by the committee's issuance of a subpoena—but, rather, the underlying basis for that decision. In the letter, Bopp concludes—again, on Crow's behalf—that "Congress lacks the authority" to pass ethics legislation relating to the Supreme Court.
Bopp cannot state that as a matter of law—and dismiss Durbin's request based on that knowledge. This is so because Chief Justice John Roberts himself has acknowledged that Congress has already passed ethics legislation that applies to the justices. What's more, Roberts also explained in 2011 that the court has never addressed whether Congress can do so but that the justices "nevertheless comply with those provisions."
"Harlan Crow thinks he is the law," Geidner contended. "The billionaire and his lawyer apparently believe they get to stop congressional investigations if they so choose."
\u201cthe tl;dr of this letter is "the separation of powers means supreme court justices can do whatever they want & congress can't do shit about it."\n\n(can't wait to read neil gorsuch's ~fantastico~ rewriting of this into a supreme court opinion.)\u201d— Leah Litman (@Leah Litman) 1684863630
MSNBC legal analyst Jordan Rubin, a former Manhattan prosecutor, quipped that Crow's "arrogant and misguided" response to Durbin "practically begs for a subpoena."
Rubin's remarks echo
progressive calls to subpoena both Crow and Thomas.
In addition to Durbin, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has also asked Crow to account for gifts he gave to Thomas and his family, and called the billionaire's rationale for not doing so "a joke."
"The bottom line is that nobody can expect to get away with waving off finance committee oversight, no matter how wealthy or well-connected they may be," Wyden said earlier this month.
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