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Harlan Crow's Yacht Trips with Clarence Thomas Now Prompting Questions Around Possible Tax Scam: Report

Harlan Crow ’s lavish gifts to Clarence Thomas have shined an unflattering light on the Supreme Court justice’s disregard for ethics and judicial integrity. But now, they are also beginning to fuel scrutiny around Crow himself, raising questions about the billionaire GOP donor’s tax practices.

According to ProPublica, whose reports on the Crow-Thomas relationship this year have intensified calls for Supreme Court reform, the real estate developer may have used his yacht trips with Thomas to lower his own tax bill—a possible violation of tax laws, experts told the outlet . “Based on what information is available, this has the look of a textbook billionaire tax scam,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden told ProPublica. “These new details only raise more questions about Mr. Crow’s tax practices, which could begin to explain why he’s been stonewalling the Finance Committee’s investigation for months," added Wyden, one of several Democrats looking into Crow’s gifts to Thomas. (Crow declined ProPublica's request for comment, but he and Thomas have each previously denied wrongdoing amid scrutiny over their personal and financial relationship.)

Crow, who has insisted that lawmakers do not have authority to investigate the gifts, reportedly slashed his tax bill by deducting losses from Rochelle Charter—his company that charters the yacht on which he hosted Thomas. But, ProPublica reports, it does not appear that Crow actually chartered the yacht; use of the vessel, the Michaela Rose, was instead apparently “limited to Crow’s family, friends and executives of Crow’s company, along with their guests,” according to the outlet.

Michael D. Bopp , an attorney representing Crow, argued in a June 2 letter to Wyden that “trips involving the Thomases…were paid to the Crow family entities holding or operating those assets.” Crow, in other words, claims he was paying his family company for use of the yacht. But Brian Galle , a former federal tax crimes prosecutor, told ProPublica that the purported arrangement was “absurd” and should be “aggressively audited.”

“Assuming that the uses of the yacht are mostly personal, Crow should not be able to take a deduction,” Galle, a professor at Georgetown University, told the outlet.

The new revelations about Crow—a donor to Ron DeSantis 's presidential campaign—come as Senate Democrats prepare to forge ahead with Supreme Court reform: On Thursday, Dick Durbin and the Senate Judiciary Committee are expected to consider ethics and transparency legislation put forth by Sheldon Whitehouse , a leading critic of the high court . Though it’s likely to pass, Senate Republicans are expected to rally against the bill, which will surely be dead on arrival in the GOP-held House. Still, as Whitehouse told the New York Times , it could mark the “beginning” of the foundation for actual bipartisan action: “You have to start somewhere,” Whitehouse argued. “The more information that comes out about the mischief going on at the Supreme Court, the more inevitable it becomes that they come around to agreeing we have to do something.”

Contributing Editor

Harlan Crow Still Wants You To Take His Word That There's Nothing Fishy About His Relationship With Clarence Thomas

How Harlan Crow slashed his tax bill by taking Clarence Thomas on superyacht cruises

Source images: Chris Goodney/Bloomberg/Getty Images and M.Y. Michaela Rose brochure provided by law firm Locke Lord.

For months, Harlan Crow and members of Congress have been engaged in a fight over whether the billionaire needs to divulge details about his gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, including globe-trotting trips aboard his 162-foot yacht, the Michaela Rose.

Crow’s lawyer argues that Congress has no authority to probe the GOP donor’s generosity and that doing so violates a constitutional separation of powers between Congress and the Supreme Court.

Members of Congress say there are federal tax laws underlying their interest and a known propensity by the ultrarich to use their yachts to skirt those laws.

Tax data obtained by ProPublica provides a glimpse of what congressional investigators would find if Crow were to open his books to them. Crow’s voyages with Thomas, the data shows, contributed to a nice side benefit: They helped reduce Crow’s tax bill.

The rich, as we’ve reported, often deduct millions of dollars from their taxes related to buying and operating their jets and yachts. Crow followed that formula through a company that purported to charter his superyacht. But a closer examination of how Crow used the yacht raises questions about his compliance with the tax code, experts said. Despite Crow's representations to the IRS, ProPublica reporters could find no evidence that his yacht company was actually a profit-seeking business, as the law requires.

“Based on what information is available, this has the look of a textbook billionaire tax scam,” said Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore . “These new details only raise more questions about Mr. Crow’s tax practices, which could begin to explain why he’s been stonewalling the Finance Committee’s investigation for months.”

Crow, through a spokesperson, declined to respond to ProPublica’s questions.

As ProPublica reported in April, Crow lavished gifts on Thomas for over 20 years, often in the form of luxury trips on Crow’s jet and yacht. One focus of the investigations is whether Crow disclosed his generosity toward Thomas to the IRS, since large gifts are subject to the gift tax. Another is whether Crow treated his trips with Thomas as deductible business expenses. (While the data sheds light on how Crow might have accounted for Thomas’ trips, there are no clear implications for Thomas’ own taxes, experts said.)

Crow’s entry into the world of superyacht owners came nearly 40 years ago. By 1984, his father, Trammell Crow, had forged his real estate fortune, and Harlan, then in his 30s, was taking an increasing role in the family business. That year, father and son worked together to erect the 50-story Trammell Crow Center in downtown Dallas. They also formed a company, Rochelle Charter Inc., with the purpose of leasing out their new yacht, the Michaela Rose.

ProPublica’s trove of IRS data , which contains tax information for thousands of wealthy individuals, includes both Harlan Crow and his parents, who filed jointly. The data shows his parents with a majority share in Rochelle Charter. After they both died, Harlan Crow took full control in 2014.

ProPublica’s data for the company runs from 2003 to 2015. Rochelle Charter reported losing money in 10 of those 13 years. Overall, the net losses totaled nearly $8 million, with about half flowing to Harlan Crow. By using those deductions to offset income from other sources, the Crows saved on taxes. (The wealthy often find ways to deduct the expense of a private jet; the records don’t make it clear whether Crow is doing so.)

For Crow, the tax breaks from his yacht were just one way he was able to achieve a lighter tax burden. The tax code is particularly friendly to commercial real estate titans , and Crow generally enjoyed low taxes during that same period: He paid an average income tax rate of 15%, according to the IRS data. It’s a rate typical of the very wealthiest Americans but lower than the personal federal tax rates of even many middle-income workers .

Crow’s biggest deduction from the Michaela Rose came in 2014, when, after the death of his mother, Crow decided to renovate the yacht. The interior needed updating to fit more contemporary notions of glamour (for one, less gold plating). The work was expensive: Crow’s tax information shows a $1.8 million loss from Rochelle Charter that year.

In order to claim these sorts of deductions, taxpayers must be engaged in a real business, one that’s actually trying to make a profit. If expenses dwarf revenues year after year, the IRS might conclude the activity is more of a hobby. That could lead to the deductions being disallowed, plus penalties. Nevertheless, the ultrawealthy often pass off their costly pastimes, like horse racing , as profit-seeking businesses. In doing so, they essentially dare the IRS to prove otherwise in an audit.

For a yacht owner to meet the legal standard of operating a for-profit business, said Michael Kosnitzky, co-chair of the private client and family office group at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop, “You have to be regularly chartering the yacht to third parties at fair market value,” typically through an independent charter broker.

ProPublica interviewed around a dozen former crew members of the Michaela Rose, some of whom spent years aboard the ship, and none said they were aware of the boat ever being chartered. ProPublica also reviewed cruising schedules for three different years. According to the former staff and the schedules, use of the vessel appears to have been limited to Crow’s family, friends and executives of Crow’s company, along with their guests.

Moreover, in an attempt to trademark the name of his yacht, Crow struggled to provide evidence that he chartered his ship. In 2019, an attorney representing Rochelle Charter filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the request. This required demonstrating commercial use of the name Michaela Rose. The attorney, of the law firm Locke Lord, wrote that the name was used for “yacht charter services for entertainment purposes” and as evidence attached a brochure .

“This magnificent yacht has cruised the oceans of the world with a graceful and gentle motion found only on the most superior seagoing vessels,” the pamphlet said, and it went on to extol the vessel’s “fine, seakindly hull” and “mahogany paneled formal dining room” that seats 16. But it said nothing about chartering.

The second page of the four page brochure extolling the Michaela Rose.

“Registration is refused because the specimen does not show the applied-for mark in use in commerce,” the USPTO’s attorney responded .

Crow’s attorney asked the USPTO to reconsider. The brochure was “provided by Applicant directly to its customers and potential customers,” he wrote . Wasn’t that enough?

When USPTO again refused, the attorney provided new evidence: screenshots of the websites superyachts.com and liveyachting.com. These show “links and references to yacht ‘Charter’ services offered in connection with Applicant’s MICHAELA ROSE mark,” the attorney wrote.

At this point, the USPTO agreed to approve the trademark, but the evidence was dubious. Hundreds of ships have profiles on superyachts.com whether they are available to charter or not. The LiveYachting page merely encouraged readers to contact a broker “for finding out if she could be offered for yacht charters.”

“Reviewing the file, it’s not clear to me that the yacht was actually offered for use in commerce in a way that would justify a trademark,” said Neel Sukhatme, a professor at Georgetown Law and visiting scholar with USPTO.

Since April, when the Senate Finance Committee first sent Crow a long list of questions about Thomas’ trips on his jet and yacht, Crow has refused to provide extensive answers. But last month, his attorney, Michael Bopp of the law firm Gibson Dunn, did shed some light on how his chartering business worked: Crow leased from himself. (Gibson Dunn is representing ProPublica pro bono in a case against the U.S. Navy .)

For Crow’s personal use of the Michaela Rose, including trips when the Thomases were guests, “charter rates … were paid to the Crow family entities” that owned the yacht, Bopp wrote in a letter to Wyden. The letter did not specify who, if anyone, paid when Crow’s friends, family or employees used the vessel or how he determined the charter rate. Crow’s spokesperson declined to clarify these details.

According to Bopp, then, whenever Crow used his yacht, Crow (or one of his businesses) would pay his own company, Rochelle Charter, and Rochelle Charter would put that down as revenue. On the other side of the ledger would go the considerable expenses of operating the yacht: maintenance, crew, fuel and other costs. If, at the end of the year, Rochelle Charter’s revenue from chartering exceeded those expenses, Crow would pay tax on that income.

But the taxes of the ultrawealthy often have an up-is-down quality. The clear incentive is to welcome losses, not profits. If, as happened most years for which ProPublica has data, Rochelle Charter’s expenses far exceeded revenue, Crow would save on taxes.

These sorts of arrangements “should be aggressively audited,” said Brian Galle, a professor at Georgetown Law and former federal prosecutor of tax crimes.

“Assuming that the uses of the yacht are mostly personal, Crow should not be able to take a deduction,” he said, calling “absurd” the idea that “the more personal use you get from the yacht, the more deduction you get to claim.”

Crow treated personal trips on his jet in a similar fashion, according to his attorney. Wealthy business owners often derive tax savings from their jets, since business-related flights are fully deductible, and the rich can often find ways to blend business and pleasure , as ProPublica has reported. The company that owns Crow’s jet is not in ProPublica’s data set, so it’s unclear if it reported net losses.

Bopp’s letter describes the standard way that jet owners account for nonbusiness guests: “Reimbursements at rates prescribed by law,” he wrote, were paid to the Crow business that owned his jet. The IRS has a “Standard Industry Fare Level” that jet owners use to calculate the value of a seat aboard a jet for any trip. The amount is roughly equivalent to the cost of a first-class commercial ticket, far below what it would actually cost to charter a jet.

The Senate investigation has also focused on an entirely different tax question: Given that Thomas’ trips on Crow’s jets and yachts could easily be valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, did Crow report them to the IRS as taxable gifts?

For each year that Crow gave gifts to someone that exceeded a certain threshold ($17,000 in 2023), he was required to file a gift tax return. That might or might not have resulted in a tax bill for Crow, depending on how much he’d already given to others over the course of his life. (The lifetime limit for total gifts is $12.9 million in 2023.)

But, according to Bopp’s letter , Crow didn’t consider the trips reportable. The gift tax, Bopp wrote, was created to prevent people from avoiding the estate tax by simply giving away assets before death. But Crow still owned his jet and yacht after hosting Thomas. “Value [was] not transferred out of the hosts’ taxable estates,” he argued. Therefore, no gift tax.

Tax experts told ProPublica, on the contrary, that these sorts of luxury trips should be analyzed as gifts.

Beth Kaufman, a partner with Lowenstein Sandler who specializes in estate planning and a veteran of the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, said she’d counseled clients on the issue. After one couple took their extended family on an exotic vacation, she said, she helped them calculate the reportable costs and file a gift tax return.

However, taxpayers rarely report these sorts of trips, experts said. One important factor is that the IRS has no way of knowing about gifts like these unless they happen to be uncovered in an audit. The agency has also signaled no interest in scrutinizing these kinds of interactions. In fact, experts weren’t aware of any audits related to gifts of this kind.

The result is a situation where, counterintuitively, the gift tax can be easier to avoid the richer the host is.

As explained in a recent paper by two law professors and a private practitioner, everyone agrees that giving $500,000 to a friend would necessitate filing a gift tax return for that amount. Using that $500,000 to buy an all-expense-paid yacht cruise for friends would be treated no differently. But if someone owns a luxury yacht and takes their friends on a cruise, the situation gets muddy. Crow’s attorney even argues there was no gift at all.

That “doesn’t square with fundamental notions of fairness,” said Bridget Crawford, one of the paper’s authors and a professor at Pace Law School.

How to apportion the costs for Crow and his guests is debatable, Crawford said. Crow might argue he would have gone on the cruise without his friends anyway, but at the very least, she said, some portion of the costs of the trip (e.g., the crew and food) should be allocated to his guests.

She and her co-authors urged Congress and the IRS to make it clear these sorts of gifts should be disclosed and provide guidelines for valuing them.

“A lot of these tax rules were developed in an era where there were a few millionaires and the tiniest number of billionaires,” Crawford said, “and now there are many. This is becoming a more visible problem.”

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Clarence Thomas and the billionaire

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Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, front left, with Harlan Crow, back right, and others in Flores, Indonesia, in July 2019.

This story was originally published by ProPublica :

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In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.

Thomas did not respond to a detailed list of questions.

In a statement , Crow acknowledged that he’d extended “hospitality” to the Thomases “over the years,” but said that Thomas never asked for any of it and it was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”

Through his largesse, Crow has gained a unique form of access, spending days in private with one of the most powerful people in the country. By accepting the trips, Thomas has broken long-standing norms for judges’ conduct, ethics experts and four current or retired federal judges said.

“It’s incomprehensible to me that someone would do this,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton. When she was on the bench, Gertner said, she was so cautious about appearances that she wouldn’t mention her title when making dinner reservations: “It was a question of not wanting to use the office for anything other than what it was intended.”

Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in administrations of both parties, said Thomas “seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations.”

“When a justice’s lifestyle is being subsidized by the rich and famous, it absolutely corrodes public trust,” said Canter, now at the watchdog group CREW. “Quite frankly, it makes my heart sink.”

ProPublica uncovered the details of Thomas’ travel by drawing from flight records, internal documents distributed to Crow’s employees and interviews with dozens of people ranging from his superyacht’s staff to members of the secretive Bohemian Club to an Indonesian scuba diving instructor.

Federal judges sit in a unique position of public trust. They have lifetime tenure, a privilege intended to insulate them from the pressures and potential corruption of politics. A code of conduct for federal judges below the Supreme Court requires them to avoid even the “appearance of impropriety.” Members of the high court, Chief Justice John Roberts has written, “consult” that code for guidance. The Supreme Court is left almost entirely to police itself.

There are few restrictions on what gifts justices can accept. That’s in contrast to the other branches of government. Members of Congress are generally prohibited from taking gifts worth $50 or more and would need pre-approval from an ethics committee to take many of the trips Thomas has accepted from Crow.

Thomas’ approach to ethics has already attracted public attention. Last year, Thomas didn’t recuse himself from cases that touched on the involvement of his wife, Ginni, in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. While his decision generated outcry, it could not be appealed.

Crow met Thomas after he became a justice. The pair have become genuine friends, according to people who know both men. Over the years, some details of Crow’s relationship with the Thomases have emerged. In 2011, The New York Times reported on Crow’s generosity toward the justice. That same year, Politico revealed that Crow had given half a million dollars to a Tea Party group founded by Ginni Thomas, which also paid her a $120,000 salary. But the full scale of Crow’s benefactions has never been revealed.

Long an influential figure in pro-business conservative politics, Crow has spent millions on ideological efforts to shape the law and the judiciary. Crow and his firm have not had a case before the Supreme Court since Thomas joined it, though the court periodically hears major cases that directly impact the real estate industry. The details of his discussions with Thomas over the years remain unknown, and it is unclear if Crow has had any influence on the justice’s views.

In his statement , Crow said that he and his wife have never discussed a pending or lower court case with Thomas. “We have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue,” he added.

In Thomas’ public appearances over the years, he has presented himself as an everyman with modest tastes.

“I don’t have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States,” Thomas said in a recent interview for a documentary about his life, which Crow helped finance.

“I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas said. “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.”

“You don’t need to worry about this — it’s all covered”

Crow’s private akeside resort, Camp Topridge, sits in a remote corner of the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Closed off from the public by ornate wooden gates, the 105-acre property, once the summer retreat of the same heiress who built Mar-a-Lago, features an artificial waterfall and a great hall where Crow’s guests are served meals prepared by private chefs. Inside, there’s clear evidence of Crow and Thomas’ relationship: a painting of the two men at the resort, sitting outdoors smoking cigars alongside conservative political operatives. A statue of a Native American man, arms outstretched, stands at the center of the image, which is photographic in its clarity.

The painting captures a scene from around five years ago, said Sharif Tarabay, the artist who was commissioned by Crow to paint it. Thomas has been vacationing at Topridge virtually every summer for more than two decades, according to interviews with more than a dozen visitors and former resort staff, as well as records obtained by ProPublica. He has fished with a guide hired by Crow and danced at concerts put on by musicians Crow brought in. Thomas has slept at perhaps the resort’s most elegant accommodation, an opulent lodge overhanging Upper St. Regis Lake.

The mountainous area draws billionaires from across the globe. Rooms at a nearby hotel built by the Rockefellers start at $2,250 a night. Crow’s invitation-only resort is even more exclusive. Guests stay for free, enjoying Topridge’s more than 25 fireplaces, three boathouses, clay tennis court and batting cage, along with more eccentric features: a lifesize replica of the Harry Potter character Hagrid’s hut, bronze statues of gnomes and a 1950s-style soda fountain where Crow’s staff fixes milkshakes.

Crow’s access to the justice extends to anyone the businessman chooses to invite along. Thomas’ frequent vacations at Topridge have brought him into contact with corporate executives and political activists.

During just one trip in July 2017, Thomas’ fellow guests included executives at Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers, major Republican donors and one of the leaders of the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-business conservative think tank, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. The painting of Thomas at Topridge shows him in conversation with Leonard Leo , the Federalist Society leader regarded as an architect of the Supreme Court’s recent turn to the right.

In his statement to ProPublica, Crow said he is “unaware of any of our friends ever lobbying or seeking to influence Justice Thomas on any case, and I would never invite anyone who I believe had any intention of doing that.”

“These are gatherings of friends,” Crow said.

Crow has deep connections in conservative politics. The heir to a real estate fortune, Crow oversees his family’s business empire and recently named Marxism as his greatest fear. He was an early patron of the powerful anti-tax group Club for Growth and has been on the board of AEI for over 25 years. He also sits on the board of the Hoover Institution, another conservative think tank.

A major Republican donor for decades, Crow has given more than $10 million in publicly disclosed political contributions. He’s also given to groups that keep their donors secret — how much of this so-called dark money he’s given and to whom are not fully known. “I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose,” Crow once told the Times.

Crow has long supported efforts to move the judiciary to the right. He has donated to the Federalist Society and given millions of dollars to groups dedicated to tort reform and conservative jurisprudence. AEI and the Hoover Institution publish scholarship advancing conservative legal theories, and fellows at the think tanks occasionally file amicus briefs with the Supreme Court.

On the court since 1991, Thomas is a deeply conservative jurist known for his “originalism,” an approach that seeks to adhere to close readings of the text of the Constitution. While he has been resolute in this general approach, his views on specific matters have sometimes evolved. Recently, Thomas harshly criticized one of his own earlier opinions as he embraced a legal theory, newly popular on the right, that would limit government regulation. Small evolutions in a justice’s thinking or even select words used in an opinion can affect entire bodies of law, and shifts in Thomas’ views can be especially consequential. He’s taken unorthodox legal positions that have been adopted by the court’s majority years down the line.

Soon after Crow met Thomas three decades ago, he began lavishing the justice with gifts, including a $19,000 Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass, which Thomas disclosed. Recently, Crow gave Thomas a portrait of the justice and his wife, according to Tarabay, who painted it. Crow’s foundation also gave $105,000 to Yale Law School, Thomas’ alma mater, for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund,” tax filings show.

Crow said that he and his wife have funded a number of projects that celebrate Thomas. “We believe it is important to make sure as many people as possible learn about him, remember him and understand the ideals for which he stands,” he said.

To trace Thomas’ trips around the world on Crow’s superyacht, ProPublica spoke to more than 15 former yacht workers and tour guides and obtained records documenting the ship’s travels.

On the Indonesia trip in the summer of 2019, Thomas flew to the country on Crow’s jet, according to another passenger on the plane. Clarence and Ginni Thomas were traveling with Crow and his wife, Kathy. Crow’s yacht, the Michaela Rose, decked out with motorboats and a giant inflatable rubber duck, met the travelers at a fishing town on the island of Flores.

Touring the Lesser Sunda Islands, the group made stops at Komodo National Park, home of the eponymous reptiles; at the volcanic lakes of Mount Kelimutu; and at Pantai Meko, a spit of pristine beach accessible only by boat. Another guest was Mark Paoletta, a friend of the Thomases then serving as the general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget in the administration of President Donald Trump.

Paoletta was bound by executive branch ethics rules at the time and told ProPublica that he discussed the trip with an ethics lawyer at his agency before accepting the Crows’ invitation. “Based on that counsel’s advice, I reimbursed Harlan for the costs,” Paoletta said in an email. He did not respond to a question about how much he paid Crow.

(Paoletta has long been a pugnacious defender of Thomas and recently testified before Congress against strengthening judicial ethics rules. “There is nothing wrong with ethics or recusals at the Supreme Court,” he said, adding, “To support any reform legislation right now would be to validate these vicious political attacks on the Supreme Court,” referring to criticism of Thomas and his wife.)

The Indonesia vacation wasn’t Thomas’ first time on the Michaela Rose. He went on a river day trip around Savannah, Georgia, and an extended cruise in New Zealand roughly a decade ago.

As a token of his appreciation, he gave one yacht worker a copy of his memoir. Thomas signed the book: “Thank you so much for all your hard work on our New Zealand adventure.”

Crow’s policy was that guests didn’t pay, former Michaela Rose staff said. “You don’t need to worry about this — it’s all covered,” one recalled the guests being told.

There’s evidence Thomas has taken even more trips on the superyacht. Crow often gave his guests custom polo shirts commemorating their vacations, according to staff. ProPublica found photographs of Thomas wearing at least two of those shirts. In one, he wears a blue polo shirt embroidered with the Michaela Rose’s logo and the words “March 2007” and “Greek Islands.”

Thomas didn’t report any of the trips ProPublica identified on his annual financial disclosures . Ethics experts said the law clearly requires disclosure for private jet flights and Thomas appears to have violated it.

Justices are generally required to publicly report all gifts worth more than $415, defined as “anything of value” that isn’t fully reimbursed. There are exceptions: If someone hosts a justice at their own property, free food and lodging don’t have to be disclosed. That would exempt dinner at a friend’s house. The exemption never applied to transportation, such as private jet flights, experts said, a fact that was made explicit in recently updated filing instructions for the judiciary.

Two ethics law experts told ProPublica that Thomas’ yacht cruises, a form of transportation, also required disclosure.

“If Justice Thomas received free travel on private planes and yachts, failure to report the gifts is a violation of the disclosure law,” said Kedric Payne, senior director for ethics at the nonprofit government watchdog Campaign Legal Center. (Thomas himself once reported receiving a private jet trip from Crow, on his disclosure for 1997.)

The experts said Thomas’ stays at Topridge may have required disclosure too, in part because Crow owns it not personally but through a company. Until recently, the judiciary’s ethics guidance didn’t explicitly address the ownership issue. The recent update to the filing instructions clarifies that disclosure is required for such stays.

How many times Thomas failed to disclose trips remains unclear. Flight records from the Federal Aviation Administration and FlightAware suggest he makes regular use of Crow’s plane. The jet often follows a pattern: from its home base in Dallas to Washington Dulles airport for a brief stop, then on to a destination Thomas is visiting and back again.

ProPublica identified five such trips in addition to the Indonesia vacation.

On July 7 last year, Crow’s jet made a 40-minute stop at Dulles and then flew to a small airport near Topridge, returning to Dulles six days later. Thomas was at the resort that week for his regular summer visit, according to a person who was there. Twice in recent years, the jet has followed the pattern when Thomas appeared at Crow’s properties in Dallas — once for the Jan. 4, 2018, swearing-in of Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho at Crow’s private library and again for a conservative think tank conference Crow hosted last May.

Thomas has even used the plane for a three-hour trip. On Feb. 11, 2016, the plane flew from Dallas to Dulles to New Haven, Connecticut, before flying back later that afternoon. ProPublica confirmed that Thomas was on the jet through Supreme Court security records obtained by the nonprofit Fix the Court, private jet data, a New Haven plane spotter and another person at the airport. There are no reports of Thomas making a public appearance that day, and the purpose of the trip remains unclear.

Jet charter companies told ProPublica that renting an equivalent plane for the New Haven trip could cost around $70,000.

On the weekend of Oct. 16, 2021, Crow’s jet repeated the pattern. That weekend, Thomas and Crow traveled to a Catholic cemetery in a bucolic suburb of New York City. They were there for the unveiling of a bronze statue of the justice’s beloved eighth grade teacher, a nun, according to Catholic Cemetery magazine.

As Thomas spoke from a lectern, the monument towered over him, standing 7 feet tall and weighing 1,800 pounds, its granite base inscribed with words his teacher once told him. Thomas told the nuns assembled before him, “This extraordinary statue is dedicated to you sisters.”

He also thanked the donors who paid for the statue: Harlan and Kathy Crow.

Do you have any tips on the courts? Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at [email protected] and by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at [email protected] or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.

Matt Easton contributed reporting.

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What to Know About Justice Clarence Thomas Accepting Luxury Vacations Without Reporting Them

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F or more than 20 years now, conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been accepting luxury trips from billionaire and Republican super donor Harlan Crow, without reporting them in his financial disclosures, a news investigation from ProPublica found. On Friday Thomas referred to Crow as a “dear friend” and said that he didn’t have to report hospitality from Crow.

ProPublica reports that Thomas and his wife have flown on Crow’s private jet, cruised on his yacht and spent about a week every summer at his private resort in the Adirondack mountains. The investigative nonprofit news outlet reports that Thomas’ 2019 trip island hopping in Indonesia with a chartered plane and a superyacht—owned by Crow—would have cost Thomas more than half a million dollars if he’d paid for it. As a public servant, Thomas has an annual salary of $285,000.

Legal experts are debating the ethics of Thomas omitting the vacations from his financial disclosures, but it remains unclear whether Thomas has violated any laws.

Extravagant vacations

ProPublica looked into flight records and internal documents from Crow’s office and interviewed dozens of witnesses. The report found that Thomas has flown on Crow’s private jet on many occasions and has accompanied Crow to Bohemian Grove, an exclusive all-male retreat in California, as well as to Crow’s ranch in Texas.

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“Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years. As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them,” Thomas said in a statement Friday.

A real estate developer from Dallas, Crow is the CEO of his own company, Crow Holdings. For years, Crow has contributed millions of dollars to conservative lobbying and other ideological efforts. Crow told ProPublica that he had occasionally extended “hospitality” to the Thomases over the years.

In his most recent annual disclosure, Thomas checked the box indicating that he had no gifts to report. “Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable,” Thomas added Friday.

As the longest-serving justice on the Supreme Court, Thomas has outlived many justices who he worked with at the beginning of his tenure.

The ethical dilemma

Supreme Court justices are generally required to report gifts worth more than $415, classified as “anything of value.” Exceptions for staying or dining with friends exist, but transportation—such as flights on Crow’s private jet—are still supposed to be reported.

Following the Watergate scandal, a 1978 law mandated that government officials, including congressmen, federal judges and Supreme Court justices, disclose their finances in an annual report. However, new guidelines launched on March 14 clarify which things must be reported, and justices are now required to disclose when they receive any free gifts and lodging at commercial properties, or whenever the hospitality is reimbursed by an outside third party.

“It is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,” Thomas said.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said Thursday that the Senate Judiciary Committee “will act” on the report.

“The highest court in the land shouldn’t have the lowest ethical standards. Today’s ProPublica report reveals that Justice Thomas has for years accepted luxury travel on private yachts and jets and a litany of other gifts that he failed to disclose,” Durbin said. “Today’s report demonstrates, yet again, that Supreme Court Justices must be held to an enforceable code of conduct.”

On Friday, 24 Democrats from both chambers of Congress sent Chief Justice John Roberts a letter calling for a “swift, thorough, independent and transparent investigation” to determine if Thomas’ vacations broke any laws or ethics rules.

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Watch CBS News

Clarence Thomas formally discloses trips with GOP donor as Supreme Court justices file new financial reports

By Melissa Quinn

Updated on: June 7, 2024 / 7:29 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — Justice Clarence Thomas has formally disclosed two trips he took with Republican megadonor Harlan Crow in 2019, according to his financial disclosure report for 2023 that was publicly released Friday.

The report , which Thomas filed on May 15, included an amendment to his disclosure form for 2019 to list two trips he took with Crow in July of that year. The first, to Bali, lists Thomas as a guest of Harlan and Kathy Crow. The justice reported receiving food and lodging at a hotel.

The second trip, to Monte Rio, California, across three days in July 2019, again lists Thomas as a guest of Crow's. He said he received food and lodging at a private club.

The information was "inadvertently omitted at the time of filing," according to Thomas' latest annual disclosure form. It notes that the justice "sought and received guidance from his accountant and ethics counsel" when preparing his report for 2023.

The financial disclosure reports for eight of the nine sitting justices were released to the public Friday. Justice Samuel Alito requested and received a 90-day extension to file his disclosure, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Supreme Court justices' financial disclosures

Supreme Court justices pose for an official portrait on Friday, Oct 7, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

The disclosures show that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson received four concert tickets from singer Beyoncé, valued at $3,711. She also received artwork for her chambers valued at $10,000 and $2,500. Thomas' report states that he received two photo albums worth $2,000.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh did not receive any gifts last year, according to their reports.

Several of the justices received book royalties and income from other projects. Sotomayor, for example, raked in more than $86,000 in royalties from publisher Penguin Random House and just under $2,000 from a production company for appearing on the animated PBS show "Alma's Way."

Jackson, meanwhile, received a book advance of more than $893,000 from Penguin Random House, paid through KayPac LLC, of which her report lists her as the "sole member." Her husband started the company in 2022, according to the group Fix the Court , which advocates for more transparency at the Supreme Court.

Gorsuch reported $312 in royalties from Princeton University Press and $250,000 in royalty income from HarperCollins, according to his disclosure. Kavanaugh's disclosure shows he brought in $340,000 in book royalties from Javelin Group/Regnery Publishing.

Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett received teaching income in 2023, their reports show.

Thomas remains an honorary member of the board of directors for the Horatio Alger Association, and Sotomayor listed her position as governing director of iCivics, an organization started by the late Justice Sandra Day O'Connor that promotes civics education in schools. Kavanaugh served as a coach for a girls basketball team, according to his disclosure report.

The reports are submitted annually to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and reflect a justice's outside positions, income, reimbursements, gifts and investments for the prior calendar year. The financial disclosures have generated renewed interest in the wake of reporting by the news outlet ProPublica last year detailing the trips Thomas accepted from Crow — including to Bali and the private club in California — and real estate dealings between the two, which had not been listed in the justice's earlier reports.

Thomas had said last year he did not believe he had to disclose the travel and pledged to comply with guidelines about personal hospitality issued last year by the Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for the federal courts. The justice's report for 2022 listed flights Thomas took aboard Crow's private plane, as well as lodging at his property in the Adirondacks. Thomas also provided details about a 2014 real estate transaction with Crow that ProPublica revealed.

His report for 2023 did not include any reimbursements for lodging, transportation, food or entertainment.

The revelations about Thomas' relationship with Crow, a Texas real estate developer, sparked a political firestorm over the ethics practices at the Supreme Court and prompted calls for the nation's highest court to adopt a binding code of conduct.

The Senate Judiciary Committee launched an investigation into the issue and advanced legislation that would require the Supreme Court to adopt an enforceable ethics code. Committee Democrats also authorized subpoenas to Crow and Leonard Leo, a conservative judicial activist. The subpoena to Leo was issued in April, and he refused to comply . A spokesman for Crow said he did not receive one.

The Supreme Court adopted a formal code of conduct in November, though it did not include a mechanism for enforcement.

The court's unilateral action has done little to stem the scrutiny of the justices. Controversy erupted last month over two flags that were displayed outside of Alito's homes in Virginia and New Jersey. The first, an upside-down American flag, was seen outside Alito's Virginia residence in early January 2021. The second, an "Appeal to Heaven" flag, was displayed outside his New Jersey vacation home in the summer of 2023.

Alito rejected calls from congressional Democrats from two cases involving former President Donald Trump and said he was not involved in the displays. He said the flags were flown by his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, and neither of them knew their meanings. Both types were carried by rioters who breached the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021 , and have become associated with the "Stop the Steal" movement.

Harlan Crow
Supreme Court of the United States
Clarence Thomas
Republican Party

Melissa Quinn is a politics reporter for CBSNews.com. She has written for outlets including the Washington Examiner, Daily Signal and Alexandria Times. Melissa covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts.

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Clarence Thomas has been secretly accepting luxury trips from a Dallas-based GOP megadonor for over 20 years

by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski

This story was originally published by ProPublica . Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thomas did not respond to a detailed list of questions.

Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in administrations of both parties, said Thomas “seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations.”

In Thomas’ public appearances over the years, he has presented himself as an everyman with modest tastes.

‘You Don’t Need to Worry About This — It’s All Covered’

Crow’s private lakeside resort, Camp Topridge, sits in a remote corner of the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Closed off from the public by ornate wooden gates, the 105-acre property, once the summer retreat of the same heiress who built Mar-a-Lago, features an artificial waterfall and a great hall where Crow’s guests are served meals prepared by private chefs. Inside, there’s clear evidence of Crow and Thomas’ relationship: a painting of the two men at the resort, sitting outdoors smoking cigars alongside conservative political operatives. A statue of a Native American man, arms outstretched, stands at the center of the image, which is photographic in its clarity.

During just one trip in July 2017, Thomas’ fellow guests included executives at Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers , major Republican donors and one of the leaders of the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-business conservative think tank, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. The painting of Thomas at Topridge shows him in conversation with Leonard Leo , the Federalist Society leader regarded as an architect of the Supreme Court’s recent turn to the right.

“These are gatherings of friends,” Crow said.

Soon after Crow met Thomas three decades ago, he began lavishing the justice with gifts, including a $19,000 bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass, which Thomas disclosed. Recently, Crow gave Thomas a portrait of the justice and his wife, according to Tarabay, who painted it. Crow’s foundation also gave $105,000 to Yale Law School, Thomas’ alma mater, for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund,” tax filings show.