The Supreme Court has another ethics-related headache to assuage thanks to a new damning report accusing Justice Clarence Thomas of having close relationships with yet another political megadonor.
ProPublica published a story on Friday detailing Thomas' years-long friendships with libertarian billionaires Charles Koch and his late brother, David. The report revealed that Thomas not only attended an annual donor summit hosted by the Koch network—one of the largest and most influential political organizations in the U.S.—but that his regular trips to a private retreat would have allowed the brothers to meet with him in secret, potentially influencing his position on a landmark Supreme Court case.
"Charles and David Koch's access to Thomas has gone well beyond his participation in their donor events," the report read. "For years, the brothers had opportunities to meet privately with Thomas thanks to the justice's regular trips to the Bohemian Grove, an all-male retreat that attracts some of the nation's most influential corporate and political figures. Thomas has been a regular at the Grove for 25 years as Harlan Crow's guest, according to internal documents and interviews with dozens of members, other guests and workers at the retreat."
Newsweek reached out to the Supreme Court via email for comment.
Thomas has been the center of several ethical controversies that have brought on widespread calls for his resignation.
He's faced pushback for failing to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election, due to the GOP activism of his wife, Ginny Thomas. ProPublica has also published reports that accuse Thomas of accepting luxury trips from Crow, a Republican megadonor, almost every year over two decades of their friendship.
Other reports also detail Crow paying for Thomas' grandnephew's private school tuition and purchasing property from the justice, as well as large sums of money that Thomas accepted from former UnitedHealthcare executive and close friend Anthony Welters.
The reports about Thomas have been the most disparaging of the recent ethical controversies that have shaken up the Supreme Court. The court has faced immense pressure to establish an enforceable code of conduct since there is no code governing the high court. While judges sitting on lower courts are prohibited by federal law from political activity and participation in fundraising, Supreme Court justices are allowed to make those decisions for themselves.
Senator Dick Durbin called out the court's ethics problems to Chief Justice John Roberts' face last week in a closed-door meeting, urging him to establish standards that would address criticisms and stem the Supreme Court's decline in public support.
The annual Gallup poll conducted after the court's 2022-2023 term found that only 40 percent of Americans approved of the Supreme Court, the same record-low reported in 2021. The figures were troubling since the justices have historically benefited from a majority support of the American public.
"Once again, Justice Thomas's gaggle of fawning billionaires expands and their influence on the Court grows larger," Durbin told Newsweek in a statement. "The Koch brothers are the architects of one of the largest, most successful political operations in history, aimed at influencing all levels of government and the courts. Justice Thomas hid the extent of his involvement with the Koch political network and never reported gifts associated with these engagements."
"As more details are revealed of Justice Thomas's undisclosed involvement with the Koch political network, there are serious questions about his impartiality in cases squarely confronting the Chevron doctrine," the Illinois Democrat said. "For these reasons, I'm calling on Justice Thomas to recuse himself from consideration of Loper Bright v. Raimondo."
Friday's report revealed that Thomas flew to Palm Springs ahead of the Koch network's 2018 summit on a chartered private jet, which later flew to an airport outside Denver, where he appeared at a ceremony honoring a former clerk before it flew back to northern Virginia where Thomas resides. Although Thomas was at the annual donor event, his financial disclosures for that year only included two speaking engagements, neither of which were the Koch event in California.
A spokesperson for the Koch network, formally known as Stand Together, told ProPublica that the justice was not present for fundraising conversations and pushed back on the idea that attendance of "a couple events" would not signify undue influence on the court. But others disagree.
"I can't imagine—it takes my breath away, frankly—that he would go to a Koch network event for donors," John E. Jones III, a retired federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush, said. He told the outlet that if he were the one to have gone to a Koch summit as a district court judge, "I'd have gotten a letter that would've commenced a disciplinary proceeding."
The report said that Thomas' appearance at the summit was arranged with the help of Leonard Leo, the conservative legal activist known as former President Donald Trump's White House "court whisperer" and a successful political fundraiser. Leo said of Thomas' attendance that, "All the necessary due diligence was performed to ensure the Justice's attendance at the events was compliant with all ethics requirements."
But the report also noted Thomas's involvement at the Bohemian Grove, where the Kochs are active members.
"Several people ProPublica spoke to said that before the pandemic, they saw Thomas there just about every year," the report states. "ProPublica was able to confirm six trips Thomas took to the retreat that he didn't disclose. Flight records suggest Crow has repeatedly dispatched his private jet to Virginia to pick up Thomas and ferry him to the Sonoma County airport and back, usually for a long weekend in the middle of the Grove festival."
The revelations suggest that the Kochs were able to make inroad on their long-sought after goal of having the landmark decision in Chevron v. NRDC, the 1984 Supreme Court case that set the legal test cited in decisions that upheld rules protecting endangered species and granted benefits to coal miners suffering from black lung, overturned.
"Chevron was one of the big things the Koch brothers were interested in," a former Grove employee told ProPublica.
Although Thomas himself wrote the majority opinion on the case in 2005, he openly questioned the doctrine a decade later before outright reversing his own position in 2020. This upcoming term, the Supreme Court will hear a case in which the plaintiffs are being represented by attorneys with the Koch network, challenging the 1984 decision.
"If Thomas and his colleagues side with them this coming term, Chevron will be overturned once and for all," the report said.
Update 09/22/23 4:33 p.m. ET This story was updated with comments from Durbin.
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Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
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