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Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin asked Chief Justice John Roberts to testify before a hearing on Supreme Court ethics after revelations about Clarence Thomas’ free vacations.
Durbin asked Roberts or another justice he designates to appear before the committee for a hearing slated for May 2 at 10 a.m., while assuring him the questions from Senators would be limited in scope to Supreme Court ethics.
Durbin noted the last time there was a Supreme Court ethics debate was in 2011 – and no formal code came of it.
‘Since then, there has been a steady stream of revelations regarding Justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally,’ he wrote in the letter, avoiding mention of Thomas specifically.
Senate Judiciary Dems are calling on Chief Justice John Roberts, right to testify about court ethics after reports of Justice Clarence Thomas, left, taking free vacations and accepting expensive gifts
Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin noted the last time a Supreme Court ethics code was discussed was in 2011
‘The time has come for a new public conversation on ways to restore confidence in the Court’s ethical standards. I invite you to join it.’
The hearing comes after a series of bombshell reports about Thomas’ relationship with billionaire Harlan Crow – which included lavish gifts, odd but pricey gifts and now a real estate transaction where Crow bought the house Thomas’ mother lives in and is not charging her rent.
Thomas has since said he would amend his 2014 financial disclosure to include the sale.
Unlike other federal courts, the Supreme Court does not have a formal code of ethics. The high court has said it informally follows the rules of lower-court US judges.
There had been call for a code of ethics when previous reports about Thomas’s gifts from real estate billionaire Harlan Crow came out in 2011, which Roberts ‘dismissed’ at the time, according to Durbin.
Billionaire developer and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow blasted a ProPublica report on the lavish vacations he hosted for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom he has called a dear friend
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas plans to amend his financial disclosure to reflect the sale of property totaling more than $100,000 to billionaire Harlan Crow
A 2014 photograph shows the vacant lots that Crow bought from Thomas
Durbin wrote that there is ‘ample precedent’ for justices testifying before Congress, noting lawmakers heard testimony from them in 2011.
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, told reporters he does not think Roberts will agree to testify.
‘Let him deal with a situation in his own backyard,’ said Graham, R-S.C. ‘I’m not saying it’s inappropriate, I’m just saying I would be surprised if he agreed to come. And I would support his decision not to come.’
Earlier this week Crow spoke out in his first interview since the explosive stories.
‘I think it’s a political hit job,’ Crow told the Dallas Morning News. ‘I don’t think the media cares really much about Harlan Crow, and I think they’re right. They shouldn’t care much about Harlan Crow.’
He said he thought the reports were ‘factually incorrect and being written with a strong political agenda.’
He also defended his collection of memorabilia from the Nazi period – saying: ‘We have a small number of things here that are about bad guys, including items related to slavery, which he called ‘a great evil in American history,’ and a collection on the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
The relationship between Thomas and the GOP megadonor was first formed aboard a private jet.
Rep. Chuy Garcia leads a press conference calling on Clarence Thomas to resign
Crow said he met Thomas at a meeting in D.C. of the now-defunct free market National Center for Policy Analysis think tank. He offered Thomas a ride on his private jet upon learning he had a speaking engagement for the group in Dallas, where he lives.
‘I had never met him,’ Crow said. ‘During that flight, we found out we were kind of simpatico. We’re the same age. We grew up in the same era. We come from absolutely polar opposite life stories, but we had a lot in common.’
Jet transport would turn out to figure prominently in revelations about his vacations with Thomas, including one that involved private jet travel to Indonesia.
Thomas will now include on his financial records sale of the Georgia home – where his mother, Leola Williams, 94, lives rent-free – to Crow for $100,000.
The updated form will reflect the 2014 deal, which had Crow purchasing the single-story home and two vacant lots for $133,363 as a future ‘public museum’ dedicated to Thomas’s life.
A federal disclosure law requires justices and other officials to report the sale of real estate over $1,000. But Thomas never reported selling the Savannah properties.
Crow told ProPublica he bought the home, where Thomas partially grew up, to one day preserve it for future generations.
The reversal is not the first time the justice with lifetime tenure has agreed to update his disclosures following press reports.
A source who spoke about the decision to update the forms told CNN Thomas filled out earlier versions with the help of aides and characterized it as an oversight, while also arguing the powerful jurist believed he didn’t have to disclose it because he had lost money on the transactions.
That arrangement is apparently founded on Thomas having invested between $50,000 and $70,000 on improvements, on a sale that brought proceeds of $44,000, according to the source, although the disclosure form itself requires reporting of transactions, not simply those that turn a profit.
Thomas has had to amend his disclosure reports in the past. He did so in 2011 after neglecting to mention income his wife earned at the conservative Heritage Foundation between 1998 and 2003 after ethics watchdog Common Cause flagged the matter.
