Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden demanded an accounting last month of all of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Crow’s lawyers responded to the Oregon Democrat late Monday and they refused to comply, sending what a committee spokesperson characterized as “an obstructive letter.”
Thomas and Crow have been the subject of multiple reports from ProPublica and other outlets detailing how Crow has lavished gifts on the Supreme Court justice for years. That largesse has included expensive gifts and hospitality ranging from luxury international travel, to paying for Thomas’ ward’s private school tuition, and buying and renovating Thomas’ mother’s house, where she’s lived rent-free for years.
Wyden argued that these gifts from Crow over the years were substantial enough that the billionaire Republican donor would have been required to report them to the IRS on his annual gift tax returns. Crow’s lawyers argue that the Finance Committee doesn’t have a right to ask for that information, writing that the “Committee must have a legitimate legislative purpose for any inquiry, and the scope of the inquiry must be reasonably related to that purpose.” This, they argue, is part of “a broader campaign against Justice Thomas and, now, Mr. Crow.” Also, as if it is relevant, “While the Crows have provided hospitality to the Thomases, that hospitality is rooted in a deep friendship, and the Crows derive great satisfaction from spending time with their friends.”
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This letter is a preview of what the Senate Judiciary Committee, which just sent its own demand for information to Crow about the gifts, will likely hear in response. The committee asked for a list of all gifts to Thomas in excess of $415. Any gift valued at more than that has to be declared, according to federal disclosure rules for high-level federal officials, including Supreme Court justices.
It’s not necessarily the end of the Finance Committee inquiry, however. Wyden left the door open to “explore using other tools at the committee’s disposal” in the inquiry. Those tools could include subpoenaing Crow for the records or getting them from the Internal Revenue Service. The tax committees in both the House and Senate have the power under the tax code to get private citizen’s tax returns.
There could be a wrinkle in that plan: Crow bought himself a “golden passport” from noted tax haven St. Kitts and Nevis, according to documents a whistleblower provided to the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation as part of its Passport Papers investigation and reviewed by the Project on Government Oversight and reported at The Intercept. Crow and his brother bought the passports in 2012 and it’s not clear whether they renewed them last year, but they still held them as recently as last year.
If Crow has been using the tax shelter this dual citizenship provided him, it might be harder for Wyden to get any useful information from the IRS.
Senate Republicans, always happy to ally themselves with the wealthy and the corrupt, vow to oppose any efforts Wyden makes to get the information. Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, said that furthering the inquiry would “undermine the independence of the Supreme Court and its individual Justices.” As if a justice who has spent the last several decades in the pocket of a billionaire is in any way “independent.”
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