Clarence Thomas's Corruption Finally Has A Price Tag
Thomas got just under $6 million in gifts while on the Court.
Over the last 18 months or so, there’ve been a glut of story about the big-ticket gifts Supreme Court justices have received over the course of their tenure on the Court — without reporting them as per disclosure rules. It’s easy to miss the details of the lavish gifts and splashy luxe travel accommodations and thus, not grasp the scope of the gifts SCOTUS has been getting.
Well, the good folks at Fix the Court (FTC) have compiled the gifts bestowed upon the justices over the last 20 years.
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And hoo-boy, the chart of gifts is staggering. Of the $6,592,657 of gifts and “likely” gifts identified by FTC, a WHOPPING $5,879,796 of them went to Clarence Thomas.
I will officially stop listening to all right-wing whataboutisms now.
(Image via Fix the Court; click to enlarge)
But as FTC notes, this is almost certainly an undercount:
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The total number and value of the gifts (672 / $6,592,507) is most likely an undercount. Based on ProPublica’s reporting, FTC calculated the number of visits to Topridge and Bohemian Grove, as well as free tickets to Dallas Cowboys and Florida Panthers games, for example, but erred on the low end.
Similarly, thanks to an article by D.C.-based attorney Stephen Bruce, FTC was able to tally many of the hunting trips Scalia took that would not count as personal hospitality — i.e., the hunting lodge was commercially owned or Scalia arrived via private plane. But FTC was not able to verify the ownership of some of the hunting lodges by press time. The hospitality and/or gifts offered by Gayle and Donald Wright to Scalia and Justice Alito were also omitted from the tally. Plus, three justices since 2005 died while in office, and deceased justices do not file disclosures, so the gift hauls of Rehnquist, Scalia and Ginsburg might also be undercounts.
This is all a terrible look for the Court. “Supreme Court justices should not be accepting gifts, let alone the hundreds of freebies worth millions of dollars they’ve received over the years,” Fix the Court’s Gabe Roth said. “Public servants who make four times the median local salary, and who can make millions writing books on any topic they like, can afford to pay for their own vacations, vehicles, hunting excursions and club memberships — to say nothing of the influence the gift-givers are buying with their ‘generosity.’ The ethics crisis at the Court won’t begin to abate until justices adopt stricter gift acceptance rules.”
Listen, we need an actual, enforceable ethical code for the Supreme Court. We’ve known it for a while, and this is more evidence to heap on that pile. But for those who are already resistant to the concept, I’m not sure if this gets them over the hump.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].
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