Clarence Thomas Took Other Trips on Harlan Crow’s Jet, Documents Show

Justice Clarence Thomas never disclosed three trips aboard the private jet of the Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, according to documents obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee released on Thursday.

The documents, obtained by Democrats on the panel, list three visits that have not previously been reported: one to a city in Montana, near Glacier National Park, in 2017; another to his hometown, Savannah, Ga., in March 2019; and another to Northern California in 2021.

The purpose of each trip was not immediately clear, nor was the reason for their omission on the justice’s disclosure forms. However, all of the flights involve short stays: two were round trips that did not include an overnight stay.

The revelation underlined the extent to which Justice Thomas has relied on the generosity of his friends over the years and the consistency with which he declined to report those ties.

Justice Thomas has said that he had been advised he did not need to disclose gifts of personal hospitality from friends who did not have cases before the Supreme Court.

The announcement is all but certain to fuel the fight over greater transparency at the Supreme Court. Lawmakers’ efforts to require that justices be held to ethics standards similar to those for the executive and legislative branches have faltered. And even as the court, under immense public scrutiny, announced its first ethics code in the fall, experts immediately pointed out its lack of an enforcement mechanism or penalties should a justice have violated it.