Texas billionaire Harlan Crow refused to answer questions from a Democratic senator who is examining whether gifts such as luxury vacations that Crow gave his friend Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas violated U.S. tax law.
The relationship between Crow and Thomas has generated outrage on the left as well as calls for Thomas’s impeachment from Democratic lawmakers. The highly publicized outpouring of anger followed an April 6 article by ProPublica, a left-wing nonprofit funded in part by the preeminent Democratic Party donor, financier George Soros, through his Foundation to Promote Open Society, that disclosed the trips. Later, it was revealed that Crow purchased some real estate from the Thomas family and paid private school tuition for Thomas’s grand nephew.
The article stated that Crow, a large Republican donor, has been treating Thomas and his wife to expensive trips for years. Thomas said on April 7 that he was advised that he didn’t have to report the trips but said he’ll follow new reporting requirements imposed on the federal judiciary.
Legal experts point out that there is no actual conflict of interest because Crow has not had business before the Supreme Court and because it is not against the law for a member of the judiciary to have wealthy, generous friends. Republicans say Democrats are conducting a witch hunt against Thomas and the court in general because, after years of liberal dominance, it now has a 6–3 conservative majority.
Wyden said in his April 24 letter that the “unprecedented arrangement between a wealthy benefactor and a Supreme Court justice raises serious concerns related to federal and ethics laws.”
“The secrecy surrounding your dealings with Justice Thomas is simply unacceptable,” the letter reads.
On May 8, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee separately sent a similar letter to Crow. The letter seeks information on any gifts or payments that exceed $415 that were given to any Supreme Court justice or family member as well as an itemized list of vacations and real estate transactions.
Wyden’s committee is putting forth “an unnecessarily broad request that amounts to an impermissible congressional intrusion into executive and judicial functions,” Bopp wrote.
“We have serious concerns about the scope of and authority for this inquiry,” he added.
“Given the Letter’s timing and focus, this inquiry appears to be a component of a broader campaign against Justice Thomas and, now, Mr. Crow, rather than an investigation that furthers a valid legislative purpose,” Bopp wrote.
“As you are aware, the Committee’s powers to investigate are not unlimited. Indeed, the Committee must have a legitimate legislative purpose for any inquiry, and the scope of the inquiry must be reasonably related to that purpose. … Moreover, issues that implicate the separation of powers require a heightened showing. … The Committee’s letter meets none of those standards here,” the lawyer wrote.
The committee “effectively seeks to conduct a gift tax audit in an effort to expose private facts,” something the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 it has no authority to do.
“Congress has no authority to engage in law enforcement investigations or to conduct investigations aimed at exposing citizens’ private affairs for the sake of exposure,” Bopp wrote.
The committee “also lacks the authority to conduct a tax audit for the purpose of determining whether Justice Thomas complied with ethics standards the Chairman believes should apply in this instance.”
By targeting Thomas, the committee appears to be violating the separation of powers doctrine, he wrote.
Any congressional inquiry about Thomas “requires a heightened showing of legitimate legislative purpose and authority, and must be no broader than reasonably necessary to achieve legitimate legislative goals. … The Committee cannot satisfy that heightened burden,” Bopp wrote.
“Mr. Crow is relying on the same baseless arguments that failed Donald Trump in his attempt to stonewall Congressional oversight. I have used my Chairmanship of the committee to shine a bright light on tax schemes undertaken by the ultra-wealthy, including untaxed transfers of wealth. The assertion that the Finance Committee lacks a legislative basis for an investigation of the abuse of gift taxes by the wealthy is simply preposterous,” Wyden said.
“In fact Mr. Crow takes this position to an even more absurd level. He implies that the specter of public corruption created by his own unreported gifts to Justice Thomas somehow insulates the details of those gifts from Congressional investigation. This argument is, on its face, a joke.
“In reality, it’s obvious that Congress needs to evaluate compliance with the gift tax, and as Americans learn more about Crow’s largesse toward Justice Thomas, there’s a strong argument for stiffening reporting requirements for gifts given to public officials,” Wyden said.
Demanding tax return information from a private citizen like Crow is part of a smear campaign against Thomas that also attempts to bully the Supreme Court into acting as “a super legislature to implement progressive policies.”
“We reject this manufactured ‘ethics crisis’ at the Supreme Court as a ploy to further Democrats’ efforts to undermine public confidence and change the makeup of the court,” the letter stated.
The senators also took aim at a Democratic proposal to hold back $10 million in security funding for the court to pressure it into doing what Democrats want.
“It is shocking that the Democrats would try to leverage the physical security of Supreme Court justices and their families to force the Court to bend to its demands,” the letter stated.
The Republican lawmakers also defended Thomas as “an honorable man, a principled jurist, and one of our nation’s greatest justices” who is under attack by the left “because he refuses to compromise his principles.”
“These attacks on the Supreme Court and the justices must end. They are undermining the rule of law, endangering the security of the justices and their families, and inflicting incalculable damage on our country,” the letter stated.
