Clarence Thomas To Amend Statement That Omitted Billionaire Buying Mom’s Home

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas did not disclose a real estate deal he signed in 2014 with conservative billionaire Harlen Crow, further complicating the scandal involving the two men.

The justice reportedly plans to amend his financial disclosure to include the transaction.

The failure to disclose the 2014 deal was discovered by the online news source ProPublica, just days after the Pulitzer-prize-winning nonprofit organization exposed the vacations and trips that Crow took Thomas on. On a nine-day trip of “island-hopping” in Indonesia on Crow’s yacht, for example, Thomas and his wife were treated to a vacation worth an estimated $500,000.

The new findings allege that one of Crow’s companies bought three properties in Savannah, Georgia belonging to Thomas and his family in 2014, and Thomas did not disclose the deal. Crow’s company paid little more than $130,000 for three properties—one of which included a single-story house occupied by Thomas’ mother. According to city records, Crow’s company spent tens of thousands of dollars renovating his mother’s house soon after the acquisition.

Thomas never disclosed the deal, despite a Watergate-era law that requires justices to report any real-estate sales over $1000. Thomas’ apparent decision to edit his disclosure is effectively an admission of wrongdoing.

According to ProPublica, Crow has publicly made $10 million in political contributions to Republicans and has fought hard to influence the judiciary’s conservative turn.

“There is at least reasonable cause to believe that Justice Thomas intentionally disregarded the disclosure requirement to report the sale of his interest in the Savannah properties in an attempt to hide the extent of his financial relationship with Crow,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) in a joint statement.

The two Democrats have led a group of about two dozen members of Congress to demand that Chief Justice John Roberts launch an investigation into his colleague’s conduct.

Article by Jakob Mieszkowski-Lapping