A federal judge who raised concerns about how ethics complaints against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were handled will testify during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Senior U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf is scheduled to appear before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing chaired by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. It comes as a series of revelations about Thomas have fueled calls for stricter ethics rules for the Supreme Court.
Among them was the revelation by ProPublica that Thomas for years accepted luxury trips paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow, a Republican donor, without disclosing them. Thomas has said he was not required to disclose the trips.
Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, has sought information about how complaints against Thomas more than a decade ago were handled in light of the recent reports about Thomas.
Wolf, a former member of the U.S. Judicial Conference, the U.S. court system's leadership body, repeatedly questioned in 2012 why members were not receiving information about complaints filed against Thomas and how they had been resolved, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month.
Newsweek reached out to a Supreme Court spokesperson via email for comment from Thomas.
The year before, Democratic lawmakers and public interest groups had filed complaints with the Judicial Conference after reports that Thomas did not disclose years of income earned by his wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a conservative activist.
The complaints were referred to the Committee on Financial Disclosure, which cleared Thomas of "willful" wrongdoing but did not report information about the complaints to the Conference.
"In other words, Justice Thomas's transgressions remained known only to the small group of judges on the committee—they were never reported out to the full conference," former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance noted in a Substack post. "Because only the full conference is permitted to make referrals to the Attorney General, nothing else happened. The process was cut off."
Vance said even if Thomas was not aware of his obligations back then, "he is most certainly aware of them now."
That "brings into sharp focus allegations that he continued to accept and failed to disclose significant benefits from people who were not entirely disinterested in the work of the Court," she added.
"If there's reasonable cause to believe Justice Thomas acted willfully or improperly when he failed to disclose information on his recent forms—and it's hard to see how there isn't—then a referral should be made by the Judicial Conference to DOJ for appropriate action under [Ethics in Government Act]."
As well as the revelation about luxury trips, ProPublica also reported Crow's purchase of property from Thomas and his family that was not disclosed.
The nonprofit investigative journalism site also reported that Crow paid for two years of private school tuition for Thomas' great-nephew, who Thomas and his wife raised from the age of 6.
Republicans have defended Thomas, but Senate Democrats promised to pursue stronger rules during a hearing on ethics reform held earlier in May.
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