Clarence Thomas Enlists Lawyer to Fight ‘Political Blood Sport’

Clarence Thomas’ yearly financial disclosure came with a highly unusual letter from the justice’s private attorney defending the luxury travel, trips, and property deals he received from Republican mega donor Harlan Crow.

In the letter released separately Thursday, attorney Elliot Berke called the attacks on Thomas for failing to disclose these gifts in the past “ridiculous and dangerous,” and said they “set a terrible precedent for political blood sport through federal ethics filings.”

The US Supreme Court’s leading conservative justice has been dogged by allegations that he violated financial disclosure laws by failing to report lavish vacations, tuition payments, and other transactions with Crow.

His 2022 disclosure marked the first time Thomas has filed financial forms since the reporting on his alleged ethics violations and the first time in at least two decades that he’s listed any gifts from Crow.

Despite Berke’s defense, legal ethics experts say the letter from a personal attorney suggests that Thomas wasn’t in compliance with his financial disclosure reporting requirements.

“He had to go out and hire somebody to defend the indefensible,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

The allegations against Thomas are being reviewed by the Judicial Conference Committee on Financial Disclosures, a panel of judges that oversees the judiciary’s compliance with financial disclosure laws.

“If anything, Justice Thomas deciding now to start taking his ethical obligations seriously is akin to the eleventh hour repentance of a mobster,” Hofstra Law professor James Sample said in an email.

Wealthy Friends

Berke’s six-page letter on Thomas’ behalf was sent to reporters minutes after the Administrative Office of the US Courts released the justice’s financial form online.

In the letter, Berke said left-wing groups have been attacking Thomas for months over alleged ethical violations “largely stemming from his relationships with personal friends who happen to be wealthy.”

Berke is no stranger to conservative politics, having represented elected officials, campaign committees, and PACs, according to his firm bio. He currently serves as outside counsel to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), as well as many committee chairs and rank and file members of Congress, and the National Republican Congressional Committee, the website says.

Ethics experts and Democratic lawmakers have been calling on the court to enact a binding ethics code in response to the gifts Thomas reportedly received.

Kedric Payne of the Campaign Legal Center said the explanations, including those in the disclosures themselves, are likely intended for the Committee on Financial Disclosures.

“It is rare for any public official to file a financial report with a legal brief in the footnote,” Payne said. “So the potential civil and criminal sanctions may be the reason.”

The committee is expected to meet this fall to determine whether Thomas’ omissions were intentional and should be investigated by the Justice Department, Payne said.

In additional pages explaining portions of his filing, Thomas said Crow paid his private May 2022 flight to Dallas to give a keynote speech at an American Enterprise Institute conference “because of increased security risk” following the leak of the court’s draft decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

Thomas said his “security detail recommended noncommercial travel whenever possible.”

Canter called the explanation “absurd.”

“What it means is we are now accepting as a proposition that every justice should go out there and get their own sugar daddy to transport them all over, you know everywhere,” she said.

Crow is chair of the board of trustees for the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning public policy think tank.

Republicans, meanwhile, have continued to defend Thomas, saying the attacks were politically motivated.

“The Left has been out to get Justice Clarence Thomas for over 30 years,” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said in a statement Thursday following the release of Thomas’ disclosures. “He is a threat to the radical progressives’ agenda because he openly defies them and he cannot be intimidated.”

Institutional Integrity

Others, though, say that at a minimum the fact that Thomas felt the need to hire a personal attorney to help with these disclosures shows problems with the current reporting system.

Case Western Reserve University law professor Cassandra Burke Robertson said the justices should adopt an ethics code that educates the public about what rules the justices are following and that holds them accountable.

So far, the court has resisted calls to adopt a formal code of conduct.

“The one thing that’s clear is that there’s a pretty high level of distrust among the public,” Robertson said. “That level of distrust requires more institutional integrity on the court.”