Oregon senior senator, Ron Wyden, sent a letter to the attorney representing billionaire Harlan Crow regarding luxurious travel accommodations Crow allegedly provided to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
In the letter, dated Monday, Aug. 5, Wyden expresses concern over potential tax fraud. Wyden chairs the Senate Finance Committee. The letter was sent to Michael D. Bopp, a partner of the Washington, D.C., law firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. Bopp represents Crow, who made his fortune as a second-generation real estate magnate.
“I am deeply concerned that Mr. Crow may have been showering a public official with extravagant gifts, then writing off those gifts to lower his tax bill,” Wyden wrote. “This concern is only heightened by the Committee’s recent discovery of additional undisclosed international travel on Mr. Crow’s private jet by Justice Thomas.”
Wyden said he is considering “legislative solutions” to curb potentially abusive deductions
“I am offering you one final opportunity to address the tax treatment of yacht and jet trips involving Justice Thomas.” Wyden wrote.
A report from the journalism organization ProPublica, dated July 2023, argued that Crow slashed his tax bill by taking Justice Thomas on cruises aboard his superyacht and vacation trips aboard his private jet. Crow has argued that Congress has no authority to probe the GOP donor’s generosity and that doing so violates a constitutional separation of powers between Congress and the Supreme Court, according to ProPublica, while members of Congress say there are federal tax laws underlying their interest and a “known propensity by the ultrarich to use their yachts to skirt those laws.”
According to Wyden’s letter, Thomas and his wife, Virginia “Gini” Thomas, flew from Hawaii to New Zealand on Crow’s private jet in November 2010, then flew back from New Zealand to Hawaii on the jet a week later. Crow also was a passenger on those flights, Wyden wrote.
“To date, Justice Thomas has never disclosed this private jet travel on any financial disclosure forms, even though Justice Thomas has amended disclosures to reflect other international travel on Mr. Crow’s private jet.”
Wyden claimed that Thomas enjoyed “complimentary use of private jets paid for by Mr. Crow on 17 different occasions since 2016, with 9 of those flights coming in the last three years.”
A spokesperson for Crow said that Wyden’s inquiries are intended to “harass a private citizen,” according to the Washington Post.
The slow leak of stories about Thomas accepting undisclosed luxury trips, plus disclosures of an upside-down American flag hoisted outside Justice Samuel Alito’s home — that flag has become a de facto symbol of protesters who engaged in a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol following the 2020 election — led to President Joe Biden recently recommending term limits and an enforceable code of conduct for Supreme Court justices.
