Clarence Thomas May Have Had A Quarter-Million Dollar RV Loan Forgiven: Senate Inquiry

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas never paid back the full amount of a quarter-million-plus loan that financed his high-end RV, according to an investigation by Senate Democrats.

A report that Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee released on Wednesday found that the Supreme Court justice, who has been the subject of multiple ethics questions this year relating to gifts from wealthy friends and associates, “never repaid” a friend’s $267,230 loan in full after using the money to purchase a high-end Prevost Marathon Le Mirage XL RV in 1999. 

Clarence Thomas failed to fully repay $267,000 loan for luxury RV, inquiry finds

The US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas failed to repay much – or possibly all – of a “sweetheart deal” to borrow more than $267,000 to buy a luxury motor home, a Senate committee found.

The existence of the $267,230 loan, made by the businessman Anthony Welters in 1999 and forgiven in 2008, was first reported by the New York Times. On Wednesday, the Times quoted Michael Hamersley, a tax lawyer and congressional expert witness, as saying “‘this was, in short, a sweetheart deal’ that made no logical sense from a business perspective”.

Senate Democrats Want To Subpoena Harlan Crow Over Ties To Clarence Thomas

Republican Texas billionaire Harlan Crow could soon receive a subpoena to produce information about his relationship with conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as the Judiciary Committee steps up its ethics probe into the high court.

Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.), who chairs the panel, and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), who heads a subcommittee on federal courts, oversight, agency action, and federal rights, on Monday announced they would hold a vote to authorize subpoenas for Crow, conservative legal activist Leonard Leo and GOP donor Robin Arkley II.

It’s Not Personal: Why Clarence Thomas’ Trip to the Koch Summit Undermines His Ethics Defense

For months, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his allies have defended Thomas’ practice of not disclosing free luxury travel by saying the trips fell under a carve-out to the federal disclosure law for government officials.

But by not publicly reporting his trips to the Bohemian Grove and to a 2018 Koch network event, Thomas appears to have violated the disclosure law, even by his own permissive interpretation of it, ethics law experts said. The details of the trips, which ProPublica first reported last month, could prove important evidence in any formal investigation of Thomas’ conduct.

Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events

On Jan. 25, 2018, dozens of private jets descended on Palm Springs International Airport. Some of the richest people in the country were arriving for the annual winter donor summit of the Koch network, the political organization founded by libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. A long weekend of strategizing, relaxation in the California sun and high-dollar fundraising lay ahead.

Just after 6 p.m., a Gulfstream G200 jet touched down on the tarmac. One of the Koch network’s most powerful allies was on board: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Revelations of Clarence Thomas’s Koch links stoke supreme court reform calls

A report detailing how Clarence Thomas secretly participated in donor events staged by the hard-right Koch network drew more fierce protests and outrage over the conservative supreme court justice’s proliferating ethics scandals.

Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee who has advanced ethics reform amid reports about Thomas and other justices, said: “Oh, my.

Clarence Thomas Discloses Private Trips Paid By Billionaire Friend

Embattled Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas revealed he took three trips in 2022 on Republican megadonor Harlan Crow’s private plane in an annual financial disclosure form made public Thursday.

Thomas said he flew on his billionaire friend’s plane partly due to security concerns after the leak last spring of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned nationwide abortion rights.

Clarence Thomas discloses private jet trips provided by billionaire Harlan Crow

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has faced intense scrutiny and criticism in recent months for receiving undisclosed luxury travel, reported taking three private jet trips courtesy of billionaire Harlan Crow last year, according to disclosure forms made public Thursday.

Thomas also acknowledged he’d “inadvertently omitted” bank accounts now valued at more than $100,000 from his annual financial disclosures dating back to 2017, due to what he called “a misinterpretation of the rules.”

Group Assuring Public Of Clarence Thomas' Moral Character Includes Jan. 6 Defendant

The group of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ former clerks who signed on to a letter this week defending the justice from “attacks on his integrity, his character [and] his ethics” included one individual whose integrity has been drawn into serious question: John C. Eastman.

Eastman is accused of undermining the core of American democracy — free and fair elections — by scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Prosecutors there charged him earlier this month as part of a sprawling racketeering case that also implicates former President Donald Trump.

Supreme Court Rebuffed Democrats’ Call for Thomas Probe With Just One Sentence

Earlier this year, a group of Democrats urged Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to open a probe into Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito after journalists uncovered egregious corruption in the form of alleged violations of the court’s ethics code and financial disclosure requirements.

Chief Justice Roberts rebuffed their call, as new reporting reveals, with just one sentence — revealing his apparent disinterest in reining in rampant corruption on his court.

How To Bag A Billionaire (Hint: Become A Supreme Court Justice)

Editor’s note: It appears that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas just can’t stop accepting lavish gifts from his billionaire friends. Much like Moriah Mills before him, every day there seems to be a new report explaining how the judge on the highest court in the land has received everything from VIP sports tickets to private jet rides. So writers Mitu Yima and Jumoke Balogun, creators of This Black-Ass Life decided to break down exactly what it takes to finesse a billionaire.

It’s hard out here trying to afford rent, take our little trips and buy the designer drip we deserve. We’re not getting flewed out like we used to be in this economy. So when times are hard, sometimes our best path forward is by looking backward. Specifically to OG Baller Alert.

Lawmakers Urge 'Corrupt As Hell' Clarence Thomas To Resign After New Revelations

Democratic lawmakers are calling out Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas after new revelations from ProPublica that he’s taken at least 38 luxury trips paid by wealthy benefactors.

Some say Thomas’ longstanding acceptance of freebies shows the need for ethics reform on the Supreme Court.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice seemingly incapable of speaking when his job requires it, gave a commencement speech at Hillsdale College over the weekend in which he provided ironic insight into his infamous silence, urging the graduates “not [to] hide your faith and your beliefs under a bushel basket…in this world that seems to have gone mad with political correctness.”

As a sitting judge on the highest court in the land, it would seem commonsensical for someone of his stature to deliver such advice — or would, if Justice Thomas ever demonstrated that he himself abided by it.

Justice Thomas Thinks America Is Too Democratic. He Has A Shockingly Radical Plan To Fix It.

The problem with American democracy, according to Justice Clarence Thomas, is that state governments don’t have enough power to manipulate it in order to make some people’s votes count more than others. That’s the theory Thomas laid out Monday in an opinion joined by no other justice.

If Thomas’ views had prevailed, the doctrine of one person/one vote, which prevents states from drawing legislative districts with wildly divergent populations, would be eliminated. Many states could potentially return to a system where voters in some areas had 10, 20, 30 or even 40 times as much representation as voters in other parts of the state.

George Takei Calls Justice Clarence Thomas A 'Clown In Blackface' Over Marriage Equality Dissent

George Takei has come under fire this week for calling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a “clown in blackface” over the judge's stance on marriage equality. However, the “Star Trek” actor insists that his comment was not racially motivated.

During an interview with Fox 10 Phoenix, Takei, who is gay, discussed the Supreme Court’s recent landmark ruling to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. Takei said he was “angry” at Thomas, who dissented to the decision, for his position on the issue.

Clarence Thomas’s Disgraceful Definition of Human Dignity

During a break on my reporting trip to Ferguson, Missouri this spring, I visited the museum inside the Old Courthouse, a magnificent, green-domed federal-style building that sits in the shadow of the St. Louis Arch. It houses artifacts and displays relating to theDred Scott case, tried there in 1847; ten years later, in 1857, the United States Supreme Court would hand Scott—an enslaved man suing for freedom for himself and his family—his final judicial defeat. In arguably the worst decision ever handed down by any American court, in words that are displayed today inside that museum in large, bold, white letters, Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that African Americans were “beings of an inferior order,” so much so that they had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Clarence Thomas: Racial Imbalances Aren't Always A Bad Thing, Just Look At The Mostly Black NBA

In a sharply divided 5-4 ruling on Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld the use of disparate impact claims under the 1968 Fair Housing Act, finding that policies and practices with discriminatory effects can be challenged under the law, even when there was no intent to discriminate. Fair housing advocates said the decision will enable them to continue rooting out racial discrimination at a time when overt bias has largely been replaced by more unconscious or implicit forms of prejudice. But Justice Clarence Thomas argued that racial disparities often appear without the help of discrimination -- and sometimes to the benefit of the minority group -- citing the racial makeup of the NBA as proof.

Impeach Clarence Thomas?

Of all the justices on the Supreme Court, none—not even the fulminating homophobic Antonin Scalia—deserves more consideration for impeachment than Clarence Thomas, and for reasons having nothing to do with Anita Hill.

But can a sitting justice really be removed from office, and if so, when is removal warranted?

Is It Time to Jump Down the First Amendment Rabbit Hole With Clarence Thomas?

It’s painful to say, but given the perverse logic of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision and Wednesday’s plurality ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC, Justice Clarence Thomas—the uber-conservative known for invoking his right to remain silent during oral arguments—may be correct about the direction of federal campaign finance law. If he is, the court may soon be ready to make even more drastic changes in the law, taking what some legal commentators have called a final jump down the First Amendment “rabbit hole.”

Hank Johnson: Clarence Thomas 'Worse' Than Edward Snowden For Gutting Voting Rights Act

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said Wednesday that the fact that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas voted this week to gut the Voting Rights Act -- the 1965 law aimed at protecting disenfranchised voters -- ranks him somewhere below the likes of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified information about U.S. surveillance programs to the press.

"Comparing it to Snowden, I'd say the offense is worse," Johnson told The Huffington Post.