Another wealthy friend helped Thomas finance a $267,000 luxury motorcoach. A Senate investigation concluded that most or all of the principal appears to have been forgiven.³
Any one of these arrangements might have an innocent explanation. Friends give friends things. Disclosure forms can be confusing. People make mistakes.
But most people don’t repeatedly make the same mistake while traveling on private aircraft, cruising on yachts and receiving large financial benefits from political patrons.
Thomas’s defenders emphasize that Crow was his friend. That may be true. But friendship doesn’t end the ethical question. It begins it.
Most Americans have friends. Very few have friends who buy family property, pay a child’s tuition and provide vacations that cost more than many families earn in a year.
Crow also wasn’t merely a wealthy friend. He was a major political donor involved in the conservative movement whose goals were regularly advanced by the Court. There is no proof he bought Thomas’s vote. Influence usually isn’t that crude. Powerful people build relationships and create obligations.
That is why judges are supposed to keep their distance.
The Thomas story is also about his wife. Ginni Thomas became actively involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. She urged White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to keep fighting the result and communicated with people trying to prevent the transfer of power.⁴
Clarence Thomas later participated in election-related cases. In one dispute over Trump administration records sought by the House January 6 committee, he was the only justice who would have blocked their release.⁵
A spouse has every right to her own politics. But Ginni Thomas wasn’t merely complaining about the election over dinner. She participated in an effort that produced cases before her husband’s Court.
Clarence Thomas then got to decide whether Clarence Thomas could be impartial.
Alito did the same thing after political flags appeared at his homes. An upside-down American flag flew outside his Virginia residence after the January 6 attack, when it had become associated with claims that the election was stolen. An “Appeal to Heaven” flag, later embraced by some Christian nationalists and election deniers, flew at the Alitos’ beach house.⁶
Alito said his wife raised them. That may well be true. The question wasn’t whether she had a right to fly a flag. It was whether the displays might cause reasonable people to question Alito’s impartiality in cases involving Trump and January 6.
Alito considered the matter and decided he didn’t need to recuse.
Imagine that happening anywhere else. A police chief accepts a gift, investigates himself and announces that everything was proper. A town official reviews his own family’s financial conflict. A baseball umpire decides that his friendship with a team owner won’t affect his calls.
We would laugh at the process.
At the Supreme Court, it is the process.
The Court finally adopted a written ethics code in 2023. It tells justices to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety. What it doesn’t provide is anyone with the power to enforce those words.⁷
There is no independent investigator. No outside panel can review a justice’s refusal to recuse. No disciplinary body can impose a meaningful penalty. The justices write the rules, interpret the rules and decide whether they have obeyed the rules.
It is an honor system for nine of the most powerful people in the country.