Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has reportedly been accepting lavish gifts from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow for decades without disclosing those gifts, according to a report Wednesday from ProPublica. Thomas, 74, has reportedly vacationed on Crow’s 162-foot superyacht, used Crow’s private plane and spent time at luxury retreats owned by the wealthy developer.
Thomas, who is viewed as one of the most conservative justices on the Supreme Court, was nominated to the court by President George H. W. Bush in 1991. He is the longest-serving current justice. Don’t miss: Watchdog groups call for Justice Clarence Thomas to address reported failure to disclose gifts from real-estate tycoon The following are four key facts about Harlan Crow.Crow has given gifts to Justice Thomas and his wife Thomas reportedly spends about a week each year at Topridge, Crow’s private lakeside estate in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Flight records indicate Thomas has used Crow’s plane numerous times. Crow also donated $500,000 to Thomas’s wife, Virginia, to help start Liberty Central, a now-defunct conservative group established in 2009, according to Politico. In addition, Crow’s foundation gave $105,000 to Yale Law School, Justice Thomas’s alma mater, to be directed to a fund for a portrait of Thomas, according to tax filings. In a statement to ProPublica, Crow said, “The hospitality we have extended to the Thomas’s [sic] over the years is no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.” Crow said Clarence and Ginni, as she is generally known, Thomas “never asked” for any of the gifts or trips, and he called the pair “very dear friends.” Crow added that he and his wife, Kathy, “have never asked about a pending [Supreme Court] or lower court case, and Justice Thomas has never discussed one, and we have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue.”Crow is a real-estate millionaire — possibly a billionaire Crow’s father, Trammell Crow, built a real-estate company in Texas that was once the country’s largest landlord, according to the Wall Street Journal. The younger Crow eventually took over the Dallas-bas …