The nearly two-year investigation by Democratic senators into Supreme Court ethics has detailed the more luxury travel of Justice Clarence Thomas and urged Congress to establish a way to enforce a new ethics code.
Any movement on the issue appears unlikely as Republicans prepare to take control of the Senate in January, underscoring the obstacles to imposing restrictions on a separate branch of government, even if public confidence in the court is at record lows. Has fallen till.
The 93-page report released Saturday by the Democratic majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee found additional travel taken by Thomas in 2021 but not reported on his annual financial disclosure form: a private jet to New York’s Adirondacks in July Flying and jet and boat travel. Sponsored by billionaire Harlan Crowe in New York City in October, reports detailed more than two dozen times that Thomas took luxury trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors.
The court adopted its first code of conduct in 2023, but compliance with it is left up to each of the nine judges.
“The nation’s highest court cannot have the lowest ethical standards,” Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, chairman of the committee, said in a statement. They have long demanded an enforceable code of conduct.
Republicans opposed authorizing subpoenas for Crowe and others as part of the investigation. No Republicans signed the final report, and no formal report was expected from them.
Attorney Mark Paoletta, a longtime friend of Thomas who has been selected for the incoming Trump administration, said the report was aimed at conservatives whose decisions Democrats disagreed with.
“This entire investigation was never about ‘ethics’ but about trying to undermine the Supreme Court,” Paoletta said in a statement posted on Twitter.
The court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thomas has said that he did not need to disclose the trips he and his wife Ginny took with Crowe because the major donor is a close friend of the family and disclosure of that type of travel was not previously required. The new code of ethics explicitly requires this, and Thomas has since reported on some previous visits. Crowe has said that he has never spoken to his friend about the cases pending before the court.
The report cites Justice Antonin Scalia, saying he “established a practice” of accepting undisclosed gifts and making hundreds of trips during his decades on the bench. It says the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and retired Justice Stephen Breyer also took discounted trips, but disclosed them on their annual forms.
The investigation found that Thomas had accepted gifts and travel from wealthy beneficiaries worth, by some estimates, more than $4.75 million since his 1991 confirmation and failed to disclose much of it. According to the report, “The number, value, and extravagance of the gifts accepted by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history.”
It also details a luxury trip to Alaska taken by Justice Samuel Alito in 2008. He has said he was exempted from disclosing the trip under previous ethics rules.
Alito also rejected calls to drop cases related to Donald Trump or the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol after riot-related flags were seen flying at two of Alito’s homes. Alito said the flags were raised by his wife.
Thomas has also ignored calls to recuse from Trump-related matters. Ginny Thomas supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which the Republican lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
The report also points to the scrutiny of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who, with the help of her staff, has increased sales of her books through college tours over the past decade. The judges have also heard cases involving their own book publishers or companies in which the judges own stock.
Biden has been the most prominent Democrat to demand a binding code of conduct. Justice Elena Kagan has publicly supported adopting an enforcement mechanism, although some ethics experts have said it could be legally difficult.
Justice Neil Gorsuch recently cited the code when he recused himself from an environmental case. He was facing calls to step down because the outcome could benefit a Colorado billionaire whom Gorsuch had represented before becoming a judge.
The report also calls for changes to the Judicial Conference, the federal courts’ oversight body led by Chief Justice John Roberts, and further investigation by Congress.