Justice Clarence Thomas discloses three trips paid for GOP donor, attorney blasts critics

WASHINGTON − Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Thursday disclosed additional travel paid for by GOP GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow, including a private jet flight last year to Texas.

In an annual disclosure report made public on Thursday, Thomas noted a flight paid for by Crow last year for an American Enterprise Institute event in which the justice as the keynote speaker. In a note attached to the filing, Thomas said that he accepted the private plane flight because of “the increased security risk” after the leak of the high court’s controversial opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

The disclosure report also notes a private plane trip paid for by Crow last year to Texas in February as well as trip to Crow’s lodge in the Adirondacks.

Thomas’s attorney fired back at critics who have questioned his ethics, describing the intense scrutiny he has received as “political blood sport.”

Bigger picture:Supreme Court remains silent after Thomas luxury travel raised ethics scandal

The reports for Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito landed amid a series of recent scandals involving Thomas and private jet travel and luxury vacations paid for others. Alito acknowledged in June that he flew to Alaska for a fishing trip on a private jet in 2008 that belonged to a hedge fund manager who repeatedly brought cases before the high court.

Financial disclosures for the rest of the justices were released in June.

Elliot Berke, an attorney representing Thomas, released a statement minutes after the report became public defending the justice’s past reporting and dismissing criticism of the gifts and travel as partisan.

“Over the course of his 44 years in public service in all three branches of government, Justice Thomas has always strived for full transparency and adherence to the law, including with respect to what personal travel needed to be reported,” the statement read. “After reviewing Justice Thomas’s records, I am confident there has been no willful ethics transgression, and any prior reporting errors were strictly inadvertent.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, meanwhile, was the focus of a story in July about how her aides pressed colleges and a library to order copies of books she had written in connection with public speaking events.

The court has nevertheless appeared to stall on ethics changes. Based on public remarks and interviews by the justices over the summer, there seems to be no agreement on how to proceed. Congress, meanwhile, is unlikely for now to approve legislation Senate Democrats are pushing that would require a code of ethics at the court. Republican lawmakers have balked at the idea.

A Senate panel last month passed a bill that would require the Supreme Court to adopt a code of ethics after a fiery partisan debate over recent scandals involving justices that underscored the measure’s low chances of success. Citing a “steady stream of reports of justices’ ethical failures,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, described the legislation as “a crucial first step in restoring confidence in the court.”

Chief Justice John Roberts has described the ethics issues swirling around the nation’s highest court as an “issue of concern.” Justice Elena Kegan recently noted that the high court could adopt its own code of ethics and suggested that the justices are discussing it but that there is a “variety of views” about the issue. But Republicans have framed the debate around ethics as a way to undermine a court where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority.

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