May 9, 2023
The Honorable Clarence Thomas
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
One First St. NE
Washington, D.C., 20543
Dear Justice Thomas:
I am writing on behalf of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, to
raise with you the grave crisis of institutional legitimacy currently facing the Supreme Court.
For the sake of the Court and for the sake of our democracy which depends on a judiciary
that the public accepts as legitimate and free from corruption, we urge you to resign from
ofice.
This is a decision that CREW reaches with great reluctance and after much reflection. It has
become clear that over the last several decades you have engaged in a long-standing
pattern of conduct to accept and conceal gifts and other beneits received from Harlan Crow,
a billionaire political activist, and have disregarded your ethical duty to recuse yourself from
cases in which you have a personal or inancial conflict of interest. Your conduct has likely
violated civil and criminal laws and has created the impression that access to and influence
over Supreme Court justices is for sale.
1
Moreover, it is contributing to a catastrophic decline
in public conidence that threatens to undermine the entire federal judiciary. Resignation is
the only course of action that remains to undo the damage you have done to the Court’s
institutional legitimacy.
The still-unfolding scandal related to your failure to disclose the myriad gifts, transactions,
and other beneits that you received over the course of your more than 20 year inancial
1
See Letter from CREW to Chief Justice G. Roberts, Jr. and Attorney General Garland, Re: Request for Investigation
of Justice Clarence Thomas’ failure to report gifts of private aircraft travel on his public inancial disclosure report
(Apr. 14, 2023),
https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Justice-Clarence-Thomas-DOJ-Complaint-April
-14-2023-5.pdf; see also Letter from CREW to Chief Justice G. Roberts, Jr. and Attorney General Garland, Re:
Supplemental Request for Investigation of Justice Clarence Thomas for failure to properly report tuition
payments made by a wealthy benefactor for the beneit of his close relative on his annual public inancial
disclosure report, (May 5, 2023),
https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Justice-Clarence-Thomas-Amendment-to-Legal
-Complaint-May-5-2023.pdf.
CITIZENSFORETHICS.ORG
info@citizensforethics.org 202.408.5565
May 9, 2023
Page 2
relationship with Mr. Crow is truly shocking. Despite your legal requirement to disclose
these gifts, you accepted and did not disclose educational payments that may have been
worth more than $100,000 for your grandnephew to attend private boarding school.
2
Almost
every year for decades you accepted and did not disclose vacations and travel on private
flights that Mr. Crow bestowed on you and your family, including a trip to Indonesia aboard
Mr. Crow’s “superyacht” the Michaela Rose, likely valued at over $500,000.
3
You disclosed
neither your family’s sale of three Savannah, Georgia properties to Mr. Crow, nor the fact
that Mr. Crow has reportedly allowed your mother to continue to live in one of those
properties rent-free.
4
You even failed to recuse yourself from a case in which Mr. Crow had a
inancial interest despite your signiicant inancial entanglement with him.
5
We know of no
other modern justice who has engaged in such extreme misconduct. Indeed, your receipt of
consistent, lavish gifts and favors from a billionaire with an interest in the direction of the
Court is so far outside the experience of most of the American people, and so far beyond
what most would consider acceptable, that it cannot help but further diminish the Court’s
credibility.
However, your long-standing pattern of judicial misconduct extends beyond your inancial
relationship with Mr. Crow. Your repeated refusal to recuse yourself from cases that appear
to directly implicate your spouse’s personal or inancial interests – including cases in which
organizations that were paying your wife iled amicus briefs – add to the public questioning
of your impartiality.
6
Crucially, you failed to recuse yourself from Supreme Court cases
relating to the 2020 election, despite your wife’s active support of and communications with
Trump administration oficials about former President Donald Trump’s unprecedented
6
In 2012 the Judicial Education Project (JEP) funneled tens of thousands of dollars to Ginni Thomas in a
transaction designed to obscure the source of the funds. That same year, the JEP iled an amicus brief in Shelby
County v. Holder, the landmark voting rights case, where Justice Thomas cast a key vote agreeing with the result
that the JEP sought. Emma Brown, Shawn Boburg, and Jonathan O'Connell, Judicial activist directed fees to
Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no mention of Ginni’, Washington Post (May 4, 2023),
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/05/04/leonard-leo-clarence-ginni-thomas-conway/; see
Brief for the Judicial Education Project as Amicus Curiae, Shelby Co. v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013),
http://blackfreedom.proquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/shelby64.pdf.
5
Zoe Tillman, Clarence Thomas’s Billionaire Friend Did Have Business Before the Supreme Court, Bloomberg News
(Apr. 24, 2023),
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-24/clarence-thomas-friend-harlan-crow-had-business-bef
ore-the-supreme-court.
4
Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski, Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas.
The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal, ProPublica (Apr. 13, 2023),
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-real-estate-scotus; Ariane de Vogue, Clarence
Thomas to amend inancial disclosure forms to reflect sale to GOP megadonor, CNN (Apr. 17, 2023),
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/politics/clarence-thomas-amend-disclosure-gop-megadonor/index.html.
3
Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski, Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire, ProPublica (Apr. 6, 2023),
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow.
2
Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjewski, Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private Scho ol. Harlan Crow
Paid the Tuition, ProPublica, (May 4, 2023),
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-private-school-tuition-scotus; see also Mark
Paoletta (@MarkPaoletta), Statement of Mark Paoletta, Friend of Justice Thomas, Twitter (May 4, 2023 7:31 AM),
https://twitter.com/MarkPaoletta/status/1654086444594483200.
May 9, 2023
Page 3
eorts to overturn the 2020 election.
7
This included Trump v. Thompson, where you were the
lone dissent from the Court’s decision to reject President Trump's attempt to block the
release of documents requested by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January
6th Attack on the United States Capitol – documents that may have included
communications to and from your wife.
8
When the public looks at your relationship with Mr. Crow, or sees you rule on case after case
in which your spouse has a inancial or personal stake, it is increasingly dificult for people
to trust that you are making decisions only based on the law and a commitment to justice.
Every new revelation of unethical conduct solidiies the public’s growing sense that the
courts cannot be trusted to render impartial justice. The judiciary is built entirely upon a
foundation of public trust. If that falls away, the institution will fail.
While we appreciate your many years of public service, your conduct has left you with only
one way to continue faithfully serving our democracy. For the sake of our judiciary and the
sake of people’s faith in its legitimacy, you must resign.
Sincerely,
Noah Bookbinder
President
8
Trump v. Thompson, 142 S. Ct. 680 (2022).
7
See Letter from Noah Bookbinder to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. (Apr. 1, 2022),
https://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action/legal-complaints/thomas-must-recuse-supreme-court-needs-c
ode-of-conduct/.