Clarence Thomas’s 2011 Ethics Complaints Are Under Senate Scrutiny

Zoe Tillman
·3 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- The federal judiciary’s handling of ethics complaints over Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s failure to disclose his wife’s income more than a decade ago is getting fresh scrutiny in the Senate.

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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is pressing the US court system for information about how its governance body responded to the 2011 revelations. A committee of judges concluded that Thomas’s lapses in reporting Ginni Thomas’s income wasn’t “willful” misconduct, but details about that review and the panel’s reasoning weren’t shared with the public.

In a May 5 letter reviewed by Bloomberg News, the Rhode Island senator wrote to District Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, the director of the US court system’s administrative arm, that because Thomas is again being accused of violating financial reporting rules, “the mysterious disposition of the very similar non-disclosures back in 2011 is important to resolve and make transparent in light of present events.”

Whitehouse, who chairs a subcommittee overseeing federal court administration, told Mauskopf he planned to hold a hearing exploring the 2011 complaints, among other topics, “in the coming weeks.” The Judiciary Committee’s Democrats are investigating Thomas’s financial ties to Harlan Crow following reports by ProPublica detailing the justice’s acceptance of luxury vacations and private school tuition payments for his grandnephew from the Texas billionaire. Crow also purchased property from Thomas and his family, ProPublica reported.

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A spokesperson for the federal judiciary did not immediately return a request for comment.

Bloomberg News recently reported on previously undisclosed letters, other written materials, and firsthand accounts detailing concerns repeatedly expressed by a member of the judiciary’s governance body, the Judicial Conference, over how the 2011 complaints against Thomas were being handled. Democrats in Congress and public interests groups had asked the Judicial Conference to investigate.

US District Judge Mark Wolf, who was a conference member and the chief judge in Massachusetts at the time, had protested that members weren’t told about the Thomas complaints or how they were handled by a committee overseeing enforcement of financial disclosure rules, potentially shutting the leadership body out of conducting its own review.

Wolf’s objection didn’t lead to any additional formal investigation into Thomas’s conduct, but did prompt the disclosure committee to change its rules so that future “written public allegations” would be reported to the Judicial Conference.

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The latest complaints against Thomas prompted by ProPublica’s reporting are again before the conference’s financial disclosure committee.

Whitehouse responded to Bloomberg’s reporting over the weekend on Twitter, questioning whether the committee had applied the correct legal standard in vetting the 2011 complaints and saying that his office “will pursue.”

Whitehouse previously sent a letter to Mauskopf on April 27 broadly asking for information about the resolution of the 2011 complaints. His latest letter asks for more details, including who served on the financial disclosure committee at the time, the scope and timeline of its review — including whether it covered 2011 reporting about Thomas and Crow’s financial ties — and any communications between the committee, the Judicial Conference, and US Supreme Court personnel.

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