{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://hankjohnson.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/johnson-whitehouse-request-update-judicial-conferences-investigation", "Johnson, Whitehouse Request Update on Judicial Conference\u2019s Investigation into Billionaire-Funded, Undisclosed Gifts to Justice Thomas", "2024-06-18", "2024", "2024-06", "Democrat", "House", "GA", "Henry C. \"Hank\" Johnson, Jr.", "J000288", "hankjohnson.house.gov", "hankjohnson", "https://hankjohnson.house.gov/media-center/press-releases", "scraper", "New reports of additional undisclosed gifts raise questions about the accuracy of Justice Thomas\u2019s latest financial disclosure amendment and why he has not further amended his prior disclosure reports\n\nWashington, DC \u2013 Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, and Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, sent a letter to the Judicial Conference on the status of the investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas\u2019s omissions of billionaire-funded gifts and income from his legally required annual financial disclosure reports.\n\nIn the letter to the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, who also serves as Secretary of the Judicial Conference, Whitehouse and Johnson asked for an update on the Conference\u2019s decision on whether to refer Justice Thomas\u2019s undisclosed gift program to the Attorney General to determine whether the omissions were willful. The members also ask for more information on why Justice Thomas recently amended a prior return to include some, but not all, previously undisclosed gifts that were publicly reported on last year, and on the Judicial Conference\u2019s clarification of the personal hospitality loophole, which Justice Thomas has claimed is a new rule, to avoid cleaning up years of false financial filings.\n\n\u201cCongress created the Judicial Conference by statute, funds the Judicial Conference through appropriations, and enacted the ethics laws the Judicial Conference administers, and so has an obvious interest in overseeing these matters,\u201d wrote Whitehouse and Johnson. \u201cPlease advise us when the Conference might publish its report on its March 2024 proceedings, and please provide as much information as possible about the Conference\u2019s and the Committee on Financial Disclosure\u2019s activities related to Justice Thomas\u2019s disclosures, including whatever you can provide related to the \u2018willfulness\u2019 and \u2018clarification\u2019 determinations.\u201d\n\nDocuments obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee and released last week revealed new travel and other gifts that Justice Thomas has failed to disclose to date, and called into question the accuracy of the details Justice Thomas had already publicly disclosed. An appendix to Whitehouse and Johnson\u2019s letter lists the publicly reported but not yet disclosed gifts and income provided to Justice Thomas by billionaire benefactors.\n\nWhitehouse and Johnson first asked the Judicial Conference to refer Justice Thomas to the Attorney General for investigation in April 2023 after reporting from ProPublica exposed Justice Thomas\u2019s long record of accepting undisclosed gifts from the politically active right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow. Whitehouse and Johnson have since urged the Conference to consider the full breadth of secret billionaire-funded gifts to Justice Thomas as support for referral to Attorney General. Whitehouse has also written to the Judicial Conference to ask for additional details on previous 2011 referrals of potentially unlawful conduct by Justice Thomas.\n\nWhitehouse and Johnson\u2019s Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act was advanced by the Senate Judiciary Committee last July. The bill would require Supreme Court justices to adopt a binding code of conduct, create a mechanism to investigate alleged violations of the code of conduct and other laws, improve disclosure and transparency when a justice has a connection to a party or amicus before the Court, end the practice of justices ruling on their own conflicts of interests, and require justices to explain their recusal decisions to the public. A group of Republicans blocked a unanimous consent request to pass the bill through the Senate last week.\n\nThe text of the letter is below and a PDF of the letter is available here.\n\nJune 17, 2024\n\nThe Honorable Robert Conrad\n\nDirector\n\nAdministrative Office of United States Courts\n\nOne Columbus Circle NE\n\nWashington, DC 20544\n\nDear Director Conrad:\n\nWe write to request an update on financial disclosure omissions by Justice Thomas that were referred to the Judicial Conference\u2019s Committee on Financial Disclosure. In his disclosure for 2023, Justice Thomas retroactively reported gifts of food and lodging that Harlan and Kathy Crow provided in 2019, some related to a trip to Indonesia. These omissions were publicly reported more than a year ago. The Senate Judiciary Committee has recently reported additional omissions disclosed by Harlan Crow.\n\nWe brought Justice Thomas\u2019s financial disclosure omissions to the Judicial Conference\u2019s attention in April 2023, and asked that the Judicial Conference refer the matter to the Attorney General to determine whether the omissions were willful. We have continued to update the Conference as evidence of additional undisclosed gifts emerged. We attach our current list of publicly reported but not yet disclosed gifts and income as an appendix to this letter.\n\nThe new information provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee includes gifts by Harlan Crow of undisclosed private jet and yacht travel from 2017, 2019 and 2021 (including on dates inconsistent with Justice Thomas\u2019s recent amended disclosure).[1] The plain text of the Ethics in Government Act has long been understood to require gifts of travel to be disclosed because transportation is not listed in the \u201cpersonal hospitality\u201d definition and therefore can never be considered \u201cstatutory\u201d personal hospitality.[2] The Conference\u2019s March 23, 2023 letter to Senator Whitehouse expressly referred to the Conference\u2019s recent personal hospitality guidance as a \u201cclarification,\u201d and we urge you to clarify that is indeed what you meant, as Justice Thomas has declared it a \u2018new rule,\u201d allowing him to avoid amending past misfilings.\n\nThe Judicial Conference\u2019s September 2023 meeting report suggested that the Committee on Financial Disclosure had been looking into these matters. Your office\u2019s letter dated February 12, 2024 stated that \u201c[a]ctions and recommendations taken by [the Committee on Financial Disclosure] will be reported to the Conference,\u201d and that the report published after each Judicial Conference session \u201cdetails actions taken.\u201d We look forward to the report of the Conference\u2019s March 2024 meeting, to know whether the Committee or Conference has acted to address these issues.\n\nCongress created the Judicial Conference by statute, funds the Judicial Conference through appropriations, and enacted the ethics laws the Judicial Conference administers, and so has an obvious interest in overseeing these matters. Please advise us when the Conference might publish its report on its March 2024 proceedings, and please provide as much information as possible about the Conference\u2019s and the Committee on Financial Disclosure\u2019s activities related to Justice Thomas\u2019s disclosures, including whatever you can provide related to the \u201cwillfulness\u201d and \u201cclarification\u201d determinations.\n\nYour answers to the following questions would help inform our understanding of these matters, and the potential need for a legislative response.\n\nHas the Committee on Financial Disclosure concluded its review of the various financial disclosure omissions by Justice Thomas that were referred to the Committee? If so, what were the findings and results of that review?\n\nHas the Judicial Conference taken any actions with respect to the Committee on Financial Disclosure\u2019s review of financial disclosure omissions by Justice Thomas? If so, what were they?\n\nDid the Committee on Financial Disclosure request that Justice Thomas amend his 2019 financial disclosure form to include the newly reported gifts from Harlan and Kathy Crow? Was the Committee made aware of the gifts just disclosed by Mr. Crow to the Senate Judiciary Committee? Can you explain why those gifts were not disclosed in Justice Thomas\u2019s recent amended filing?\n\nPlease describe the Committee on Financial Disclosure\u2019s fact-finding process with respect to undisclosed gifts potentially covered by the Judicial Conference\u2019s disclosure guidance.\n\nHas the Committee on Financial Disclosure made any determination on the \u201cclarification\u201d question, or otherwise requested that Justice Thomas fully update past financial disclosures to include omitted gifts and income?\n\nWhat is the status of the determination regarding reasonable cause to believe any of Justice Thomas\u2019s various omissions were willful?\n\nWas Justice Thomas advised that amending his disclosures for 2019 would end the inquiry into whether reasonable cause exists to believe any omissions were willful, and was he advised in 2012 that amending his disclosures then would end that inquiry into his disclosure omissions? Is the Conference allowing retroactive amendments to obviate making that \u201creasonable cause\u201d determination?\n\nThank you for your attention to these matters.\n\nSincerely, Sen. Whitehouse & Rep. Johnson", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T21:11:47Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://hankjohnson.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/johnson-whitehouse-request-update-judicial-conferences-investigation"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.20364797860384, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}