Clarence Thomas Sold Real Estate To Harlan Crow In Undisclosed Deal, Documents Show
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose real estate sales to billionaire and Crow Holdings Chair Harlan Crow, new reporting has uncovered.
Crow paid $133K for a single-story home in Savannah, Georgia, and two vacant lots on the same street, ProPublica reports. All three properties were owned by Thomas, the justice's mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother in a sale that public records show closed in October 2014.
In 2013, Crow paid a total of $40K — 30% the amount he paid for the Thomas family’s properties — for a vacant lot and a small house on the same street.
Thomas didn't disclose the sale, despite federal laws passed following the Watergate scandal that obligate officials, including Supreme Court justices, to disclose details of real estate sales worth more than $1K.
The Supreme Court justice’s other disclosures that year detailed other items, including a life insurance policy and a “stained glass medallion” he was given by Yale University, but not the property sale.
Thomas’ failure to disclose the sale violates the law, four ethics law experts told ProPublica.
“He needed to report his interest in the sale,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a former government ethics lawyer. “Given the role Crow has played in subsidizing the lifestyle of Thomas and his wife, you have to wonder if this was an effort to put cash in their pockets.”
The sale also means Crow owns the house where Thomas’ 94-year-old mother still lives, according to neighbors, public records and social media posts up to 2020. Once the sale was complete, contractors added at least $36K of improvements to the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home, including a carport, a new fence and gates, and repairs to the roof, per city permit records and blueprints reported by ProPublica.
Although Thomas didn't respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment, Crow defended the sale, saying that his intention was to preserve the house as a future public museum dedicated to Thomas. He didn't directly comment on the purchase of the two vacant lots.
While disclosure laws contain some exemptions, such as if a property sale is used only as a personal residence of the reporting individual or their spouse, experts said those exemptions didn't apply to this sale.
Thomas’ failure to disclose the transaction implies that he “was hiding a financial relationship with Crow,” Washington University in St. Louis law professor Kathleen Clark told ProPublica.
Thomas inherited the home where he spent part of his childhood on East 32nd Street when his grandfather died in 1983. He disclosed his ownership when he was serving as an official in the George H.W. Bush administration in the 1980s.
He stopped listing addresses of properties he owned roughly a decade into his tenure as a Supreme Court justice in the early 2000s but continued to list the one-third ownership stake in the East 32nd Street property — a stake he valued at $15K or less at the time.
Two of the houses were reportedly torn down around 2010, four years before Thomas personally signed paperwork finalizing the sale to Crow’s companies. After the sale went through, a Crow Holdings company replaced Clarence and his wife, Ginni Thomas, as the party paying annual property taxes on the house.
The sale was reported just one week after investigative reporters at ProPublica uncovered gifts to Thomas from Crow Holdings’ billionaire former CEO, including luxury travel and accommodation and a $500K donation to the Tea Party-affiliated group from which Ginni Thomas received a $120K annual salary.
