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- Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Harlan Crow on Monday.
- The letter asks Crow to list any gifts he's given to a Supreme Court justice or their family worth more than $415.
- The letter follows reporting from ProPublica documenting the many vacations Crow's paid for with Justice Clarence Thomas.
On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee asked GOP megadonor Harlan Crow to document the gifts he's given to Supreme Court justices and their families over the years.
The Judiciary Committee sent its letter to Crow a week after it held a hearing on ethics reform for the Supreme Court, which Chief Justice John Roberts declined to attend. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden previously sent a similar letter to Crow in late April asking him to list any gifts he'd given to Justice Clarence Thomas, and ultimately received an "obstructive letter," according to NBC News.
In the committee's letter to Crow, it asked for him to list:
- All gifts and items given to justices and their families that were worth more than $415
- Real estate transactions between Crow and Supreme Court justices and their families
- Any transportation or lodging that Crow provided to a justice or their family
- Any times when Crow provided a justice or their family access to a "private, members-only club"
The committee hearing was spurred by a report from the investigative outlet ProPublica, which revealed that Crow paid for lavish vacations and travel on private jets and yachts with Thomas and his wife, Ginni. Further reporting from ProPublica found that Crow purchased the home Thomas' mother lives in, and previously paid for a child in Thomas' custody to attend a $6,000 per month private boarding school.
Since ProPublica's revelations, Crow has claimed he's the victim of a "political hit job."
"I think that the media, and this ProPublica group in particular, funded by leftists, has an agenda to destabilize the Court. What they've done is not truthful. It lacks integrity," Crow told the Dallas Morning News. "They've done a pretty good job in the last week or two of unfairly slamming me and more importantly than that, unfairly slamming Justice Thomas."