Justice Clarence Thomas took more trips on GOP megadonor’s private plane than previously known | CNN Politics



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Judge Clarence Thomas made several more trips on the private plane of the Republican Megadonor Harlan Crow of what was previously known, a Democrat of the Top Senate Senate revealed Thursday.

According to the information obtained by the judicial president of the Senate, Dick Durbin, Thomas traveled in Crow’s private jet during the trips in 2017, 2019 and 2021 among several states of the United States, as well as on a 2019 trip previously known to Indonesia, during which Thomas also stayed in Mega-Yacht of Crow’s.

The newly revealed private plane trips add to the image of luxury trips that enjoy Thomas and financed by friends of justice who have links with conservative policy.

Thomas has been criticized for his inability to include such trips in financial dissemination forms that the judges release every year, although he and his defenders argue that he followed the rules of dissemination of the court as they were understood at that time.

The revelation is likely to increase the tension between the Superior Court, where the conservatives have a majority of 6-3, and the Democrats in Capitol Hill, who have been pressing for more than a year by more strict rules of ethics. A series of ethics scandals that involve Thomas and, more recently, Judge Samuel Alito, has left the public approval of the Court in historical minimums.

Last year, in the midst of Propublic’s stories about the lifestyle of the Jet-Setting of Justice, the body of formulation of policies of the Federal Judiciary said that the judges should inform the trips in private planes that closed a escape that Thomas said that he had exempted him to inform the “personal hospitality” that his rich and rich friends had received. Court critics argue that the current understanding of the dissemination rules must be applied retroactively.

Thomas, through a court spokeswoman, did not respond to a CNN investigation into the new revelations and why the trips were not revealed.

He previously said that he was informed at that time that he was not obliged to reveal the hospitality he received from the crows, but that he intended to follow the recent changes to the orientation in the future. His defenders have indicated a 2012 letter of the Judicial Conference, which manages the regulations for the financial revelations of the judges, who clarified him of statements at the time he should have been informing his trips with Crow.

Last week, with the launch of their financial revelations by 2023, Thomas said that he had “unadverted” of the previous financial archives a stay at the hotel paid by the crows during the 2019 trip to Indonesia and his accommodation that same year in a private club that are members in Monte Rio, California.

However, he did not reveal his trip on Crow’s private plane for any of those trips that Durbin revealed.

In addition to that trip, according to the documents published by Durbin, Thomas traveled by Crow’s plane from St. Louis to Montana and then to Dallas in 2017; on a round trip in 2019 from Washington, DC, to Savannah, Georgia; And on a round trip of 2021 from Washington, DC, to San José, California.

“The ongoing investigation of the Senate Judicial Committee on the ethical crisis of the Supreme Court is producing new information, such as what we have revealed today, and makes it clear that the highest court needs a enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to comply with the moment,” Durbin said in a statement that he pointed to the ethical legislation of the Supreme Court presented by the Senated Democrats. On Wednesday a Durbin procedural maneuver to approve the bill on the Senate’s floor was blocked by Republicans.

Elliot Berke, Thomas’s lawyer, said that Travel Senate Democrats caught Thursday for the “hospitality exemption.” Thomas and others have said previously that they understood the dissemination rules to exclude situations that involve “personal hospitality.”

“Consequently, and as Judge Thomas has already explained, he and many other federal judges were informed that they were not obliged to inform personal hospitality gifts of friends who did not have business before the court,” Berke told CNN.

Mark Paoletta, a former Top Trump administration official and prominent Thomas Ally, said in X that Thomas revealed the hotel and the private club of previous trips because they were not covered by the exemption of personal hospitality, even before 2023 changed to the dissemination guide. He argued that a justice remains in the “home, airplanes” and the “ships” of a friend, were exempt under the rules until the revision of 2023.

Durbin and other Democrats released probes to the gifts and luxurious trips that Thomas received after a report from Propublic of Bombas that detailed the journey of Indonesia with Crow, during which Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas stayed in the 162 feet of Crow, and other extravagant trips that the Thomanda took with the wife of Crow and Crow.

Crow, whom Thomas has described among the “most beloved friends” of his family, has said that he has never spoken with Thomas about matters against the judiciary.

“Mr. Crow reached an agreement with the Senate Judicial Committee to provide information that responds to its seven -year requests,” said Crow spokesman Michael Zona, on the information revealed on Thursday.

“Despite his serious and continuous concerns about the legality and the need for the investigation, Mr. Crow dedicated himself to good faith negotiations with the committee from the beginning to resolve the matter. As a condition of this agreement, the Committee agreed to finish his investigation with respect to Mr. Crow,” added Zone.

This story has been updated with additional reports.

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