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Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has acknowledged previously undisclosed travel expenses paid for by billionaire associate Harlan Crow. Thomas’s most recent annual financial disclosure report on Thursday included this information.
In 2022, Crow facilitated several trips for Thomas, including a May visit to a conservative conference in Dallas. Thomas was a featured speaker at an event held at a venue owned by Crow’s real estate firm. Crow also arranged for Thomas’ return flight from Dallas in February after an unexpected icy storm disrupted travel.
The report also mentions a vacation to the Adirondacks in New York State in July 2022, which Crow again funded.
Thomas said he used a private jet for his trip because of security concerns caused by the leaked draft opinion on the Roe v. Wade case. Attorney Elliot Berke, who helped with the report, said that after carefully reviewing Thomas’ records, they found no intentional ethical violations. Any mistakes in previous reports were accidental.
The context for this disclosure was a series of criticisms aimed at Supreme Court justices for alleged ethical violations, deriving from a ProPublica exposé detailing Thomas’ acceptance of luxurious trips from Crow, a prominent Republican donor. In Thomas’s previous financial reports, these visits were not disclosed.
Before the first ProPublica article about Thomas, officials changed the disclosure regulations in March. The changes require disclosing private aircraft travel and staying at privately owned resorts. The U.S. Judicial Conference, the judiciary’s policymaking body, is responsible for oversight of judicial ethics.
Justice Thomas and his conservative colleague, Justice Samuel Alito, asserted they utilized a legally permissible postponement to submit their annual reports. The reports, typically due in May and released the following month, were delayed.
Alito’s report included information about travels financed by Duke Law School and Notre Dame Law School, with the latter involving a stay in Rome, Italy.
The remaining seven justices upheld the standard practice of submitting their annual financial disclosures, which included their income, assets, gifts, and stock holdings. Justices may request an extension of up to 90 days to meet this requirement.
In response to these revelations, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have urged the Supreme Court to implement new ethical guidelines.
Thomas justified Crow’s gifts as “personal hospitality,” a classification that did not require disclosure under the previous regulations. His recent report elaborated on this viewpoint in a section detailing his methodology.
Additionally, the report addressed Crow’s acquisition of Thomas’ family-owned real estate in Savannah, a transaction that ProPublica initially revealed. According to reports, Crow reportedly acquired several properties, including sites on the same street, for $133,000. In one of the homes, Thomas’ mother resided. The report clarified that Thomas’s loss on the transaction resulted from his prior investment of up to $75,000 in his mother’s property.
As a financial setback, Thomas said he had neglected to report the sale. In previous submissions, Thomas omitted the disclosure of bank accounts and other reportable financial matters held by his conservative political activist wife, Ginni Thomas, according to the report.
An August 2023 ProPublica report exposed that Justice Thomas received a minimum of 38 destination vacations, 26 private jet flights, numerous VIP passes to sporting events, and two lavish resort stays, all financed by billionaire backers, during his tenure on the bench. ProPublica reported that Thomas, typically “perched in the skybox at sporting events, had at least two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.
“This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount,” the report asserted.
“While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises, and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts.”
Democrats and ethics experts assailed the justice for his undisclosed trips and gifts. “Justice Thomas has brought shame upon himself and the United States Supreme Court with his acceptance of massive, repeated, and undisclosed gifts,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tweeted on the social media platform now known as X.
“No government official, elected or unelected, could ethically or legally accept gifts of that scale. He should resign immediately.”
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In Georgia, Donald Trump has entered a not-guilty plea to 13 criminal charges. The indictment accuses the twice impeached and four-time former indicted former president of participating in a plot to rig the state’s 2020 election results.
On Thursday, Aug. 31, a Trump lawyer submitted a waiver of arraignment to a judge in Fulton County. Many of Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the case have also submitted comparable waivers and pleaded not guilty.
“As evidenced by my signature below, I hereby waive formal arraignment and enter my plea of NOT GUILTY to the indictment in this case,” the document that Trump signed states.
According to Brian Tevis, an Atlanta lawyer representing Rudy Giuliani, the former attorney for Trump, most defendants forego arraignment when a judge allows them to do so. Tevis, who also said Giuliani would want to forego the formal arraignment, said, “99% of the time, defendants choose to waive formal arraignment and not to have to appear if the judge allows it.”
The charges against Trump, Giuliani, and the other defendants include racketeering and operating a “criminal enterprise.” In a sweeping indictment, District Attorney Fani Willis said they used several tactics to prevent President Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia’s 2020 election from being correctly certified. Trump faces a federal trial in Washington in March 2024 for interfering with the 2020 presidential election. He also faces possible 2024 trials for alleged crimes in Florida and New York, while Willis has announced her intent to proceed with a trial in Georgia next year. In all the ex-president faces 91 felony counts that could land him in prison for more than 800 years.
“I have discussed the charges in the Indictment and this Waiver of Appearance at Arraignment with my attorney Steven H. Sadow, and I fully understand the nature of the offenses charged and my right to appear at arraignment,” Trump stated in the filing on Thursday.
On Aug. 24, Trump turned himself into authorities at a nearby jail, submitting to a booking photo and fingerprinting. The court set the bond for his release at $200,000.
By Seitu Oronde On Tuesday, August 29th, 2023, photojournalist Seitu Oronde was in Harlem, to see a man’s 14-year dream of owning his own business and establishing a presence was realized. Michael Walker, a seasoned authority in Medicaid and Medicare insurance, had long nurtured the vision of bringing essential healthcare knowledge to Harlem’s residents. Mr. Walker’s office…
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Body camera footage showing the final moments of a pregnant Black woman who was shot and killed by police in an Ohio parking lot last week is expected to be released to the public on Friday.
Ta’Kiya Young, a 21-year-old from Columbus, was pronounced dead shortly after the Aug. 24 shooting outside a grocery store in the suburb of Blendon Township. Her unborn daughter did not survive.
Suspected of shoplifting, police say Young was killed after she accelerated her car toward an officer.
The family’s lawyer, Sean Walton, claims the police department has waited to release the bodycam video to minimize media attention on potentially damaging footage. Walton did not immediately respond to phone messages from The Associated Press seeking additional comment.
Blendon Township Police Chief John Belford said the delay resulted from a small staff trying to process the video and properly redact certain footage in accordance with Ohio law. The family will be able to review the video before it’s made public, he said.
The police chief gave a brief account of the shooting in an Aug. 25 video statement in which he said two officers were helping someone get into a locked car when a supermarket employee told them several people were leaving with stolen items.
Young was among them, according to the employee who pointed her out sitting in her car in the parking lot. She allegedly took bottles of alcohol without paying. One officer went to the driver’s side of Young’s car and told her to stop and get out multiple times, Belford said, while the other officer moved to the front of the vehicle.
Young then put the car in gear and accelerated, Belford said.
“The officer who was directly in the path of the oncoming car fired one shot through the front windshield,” the chief said. “The body camera footage I’ve reviewed also confirms the officer was directly in the path of the car.”
Police have not provided further details on the moments when Young was shot.
Her car continued about 50 feet (15 meters) before stopping on the sidewalk outside the grocery store. Officers broke the car window, pulled her out and began medical assistance with the help of an emergency room doctor who happened to be there, Belford said.
The two officers’ names, ages and races were not immediately released. They are on paid administrative leave while the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation examines the shooting, which is standard in cases of police use of deadly force.
Young was expected to give birth to a daughter in November. She also was the mother of two young sons, ages 6 and 3. An online effort to pay her funeral expenses has raised nearly $7,000.
Family and friends held a private vigil a day after Young was killed, releasing balloons and lighting candles spelling out “RIP Kiya.”
Her grandmother, Nadine Young, described her granddaughter as a family-oriented prankster who was a loving older sister and mother.
“She was so excited to have this little girl,” Nadine Young said at a press conference Wednesday. “She has her two little boys, but she was so fired up to have this girl. She is going to be so missed.”
“I’m a mess because it’s just tragic,” she said, “but it should have never ever ever happened.”
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Samantha Hendrickson is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
