By Lawrence Hurley - NBC News
Amid an intense debate over ethics at the Supreme Court, conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas released his annual financial report Thursday, admitting he accepted luxury trips paid for by billionaire donor Harlan Crow, a personal friend of his.
Among the 2022 financial activities Thomas reported, the judge stated that Crow paid for his trip to a conservative conference in Dallas in May of last year. Thomas spoke at the event held at a property owned by Crow's real estate company. The businessman also bought her a flight back from another similar event in Dallas in February.
The judge also said Crow paid for a July trip to the mountainous tourist site Adirondacks in upstate New York.
Evidence of luxury trips by Judge Clarence Thomas reported
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In notes attached to the report, the judge said he agreed to fly by private jet in May 2022 due to safety concerns following the leak that month of a draft showing the court was about to overturn Roe v. Wade. Wade, eliminating constitutional protection for abortion.
[Justice Clarence Thomas and his family sold homes to the same Republican millionaire from whom he accepted lavish gifts.]
Elliot Berke, an attorney who helped prepare the report, issued a statement saying that after reviewing Thomas' financial records, he was "confident that there has been no deliberate ethical transgression, and any prior information errors were strictly inadvertent."
The Supreme Court members have come under fire for alleged ethical misconduct in the wake of a ProPublica investigation that detailed Thomas accepting lavish trips from Crow, a Republican donor, which he had not disclosed in his previous financial reports.
In March, shortly before ProPublica's first article on Thomas was published, disclosure rules were amended to make it clear that private jet travel and stays at privately owned resorts must be disclosed.
Evidence of luxury trips by Judge Clarence Thomas reported
Aug. 10, 202300:31
Both Thomas and his colleague, conservative Justice Samuel Alito, had requested a deferral for the filing of their annual reports, which is allowed under federal law. Reports are normally submitted in May and made public the following month.
Judges can request extensions of up to 90 days to submit their reports.
Alito's report revealed trips paid for by Duke Law School and Notre Dame Law School, the latter in Rome, Italy.
[Judge Clarence Thomas asked to step aside from Capitol storming cases over his wife's role in the attack]
The other seven judges submitted their annual financial reports normally, listing income, assets, gifts and shares in shares.
Another ProPublica report revealed that Alito had spent a luxury vacation in Alaska with a Republican donor who had business interests before the Supreme Court.
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The ProPublica report focused on Thomas and Alito's failure to disclose the travel and hospitality they had received.
Since then, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have called for new ethics standards for the Supreme Court.
[Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas explains why he didn't report trips paid for by a conservative billionaire]
Thomas has said Crow's gifts constituted "personal hospitality," meaning he didn't have to disclose them according to the rules. His report Thursday again emphasized that defense.
Before the amendment of the rules, "the declarant adhered to the judicial regulations in force at that time, as his colleagues had done, both in practice and in consultation with the Judicial Conference," the report defended.
Alito also rejected the notion that he had done anything wrong, saying the trip to Alaska in 2008 was not reportable under disclosure standards at the time.
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He also questioned whether Congress has the power to impose stricter ethical standards on the court. "No provision of the Constitution gives you authority to regulate the Supreme Court, period," he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last month.
Most legal scholars believe Congress has a role in overseeing the court, though there are questions about the extent to which it can do so without violating the Constitution's separation of powers. Liberal Justice Elena Kagan said in a public appearance this month that Congress can regulate the court, though she noted there are limits.
[Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Reportedly Accepted Luxury Trips from Republican Donor for Decades]
Judges could decide to impose new binding ethics standards without congressional intervention, but Kagan said no agreement had been reached. Lower court judges are already subject to a binding code of ethics.
The judges said in a statement in April that they reaffirm their commitment to ethical principles. And they noted that they file the same financial disclosure reports as other federal judges and follow the same general principles and recusal rules.
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But ethics experts said the statement fell short on several issues, and congressional Democrats immediately criticized it.
Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to admit in May that more needed to be done.
"I want to assure people that I am committed to ensuring that, as a court, we abide by the highest standards of conduct. We continue to explore what we can do to implement that commitment," he said.