Billionaire Harlan Crow REFUSES to hand over records of Clarence Thomas gifts:
Billionaire Harlan Crow REFUSES to hand over documents of Clarence Thomas gifts: Republican mega-donor stops Democrats demanding receipts from lavish private jet trips and lakeside cabin stays
- Lawyers for real estate tycoon slam Democrats after Thomas investigation
- Top legislator threatens to take legal action to get hold of the receipts
- Thomas has denied any allegations, saying he was simply following the advice
GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow has lashed out at Democratic lawmakers for demanding he turn over records of gifts given to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The Republican real estate tycoon insists he won’t be turning in receipts for the lavish vacations he funded for his old friend.
He claimed it was merely a ruse by Thomas’s political opponents to discredit him and a Conservative member of the court long reviled by Liberals.
Crow called Thomas a dear friend and got to know him after he joined the Supreme Court. Crow is a real estate mogul from Dallas
His attorney Michael D. Bopp said Senator Ron Wyden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, “is seeking to tarnish the reputation of a sitting Supreme Court Justice and his longtime friend, Mr. Crow.” .
“We are deeply concerned about the scope and authority of this investigation,” he wrote.
“Given the timing and focus of the letter, this investigation appears to be part of a broader campaign against Judge Thomas and now Mr. Crow, rather than an investigation furthering a valid legislative purpose,” Bopp added.
Wyden, who represents Oregon in the U.S. Senate, had asked the 74-year-old Dallas businessman for details of the hospitality he has shown Thomas over the past two decades.
He said the Texan “obstructed” and vowed to take legal action to force him to comply.
“The bottom line is that no one can expect to get away with rejecting oversight from the finance committee, no matter how wealthy or well-connected they are,” he said.
Clarence Thomas has faced more criticism in recent weeks after it emerged that he had not shown hospitality.
He had boarded the billionaire’s superyacht to Indonesia, New Zealand and Greece and used his private jet for free.
The 74-year-old also took vacations at Crow’s country lodge in New York’s Adirondack Park.
The retreat offers boating and fishing opportunities and features exotic furnishings
Thomas was a regular at his friend’s New York estate
Billionaire Harlan Crow helped pay tuition for a relative of Clarence Thomas. This included help for the $6,000 a month Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia
Crow also paid the expensive private tuition of a grandnephew of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, which the judge did not explain.
A July 2009 bank statement showed that Crow’s company paid a $6,000 monthly bill for a boarding school where Mark Martin lived.
Thomas had legal custody of the teen at the time.
Last month, he released a rare statement noting that he and his wife had been friends for over twenty-five years.
“As friends do, in the more than a quarter of a century we’ve known them, we’ve taken them on a number of family outings,” Thomas wrote.
He said he followed the advice of others in deciding what required disclosure and that Crow himself had no business in court.
The real estate mogul has made more than $10 million in donations to Republican political groups.
He also donated half a million dollars to a conservative lobbying group founded by Ginni Thomas, the judge’s wife has issued her own criticism for supporting Donald Trump’s bid to reverse his loss in the 2020 presidential election.