(Washington) Cruises on a mega-yacht, private jet flights… The most conservative of the judges of the American Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, has accepted for more than twenty years many luxury stays from a billionaire known for his donations to the Republican Party, says a press survey published Thursday.
The online investigative magazine ProPublica says it interviewed “dozens of people” and reviewed internal documents to prove that the magistrate had accepted these largesse from businessman Harlan Crow without declaring it.
“Stunning” revelations, said in a press release the association Fix The Court, which campaigns for a reform of the Supreme Court, temple of American law.
This confirms, according to her, the need for “a large-scale and elected reinvention of the responsibilities” of the Court, and in particular the establishment of stricter rules on the gifts received by its members.
The friendship between the judge, who has the most seniority in the Court, and the real estate magnate had already been the subject of an article in the New York Times in 2011, who called it “unusual and ethically sensitive”.
And it’s not the first time that Mr Thomas’ name has been linked to controversy: his wife Ginni, a lobbyist and activist, was involved in Donald Trump’s crusade to wrongly prove that the 2020 presidential election had left him. been stolen.
Once revealed the text messages and emails she sent for this purpose, the left had castigated an apparent conflict of interest and called on her husband to recuse himself from any electoral file.
In its investigation, ProPublica also indicates that Clarence Thomas goes almost every summer to a property of the businessman in the Adirondacks, in the State of New York, and that he accompanied him to the “Bohemian Grove”. in California, an elite all-male club reserved for political, artistic, media or business figures.