Goin’ back to Harlan

Conflicts of interest don’t get much more blatant than this:

Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t recuse himself from a 2004 appeals case, even though the company being sued was part of the real estate empire run by Harlan Crow, the GOP mega-donor who has showered Thomas with lavish trips starting in 1997 and more recently bought Thomas’ childhood home, according to Bloomberg. 

Thomas previously told Bloomberg that it was OK for him to accept gifts from Harlan Crow because the GOP mega-donor did not have “business before the court.” 

But the 2004 appeal ties the Crow family name to a case that did come before the Supreme Court: In January 2005, the court denied the appeal petition, a $25 million copyright claim brought by an architecture firm against Trammell Crow Residential Co., a development company that’s part of the real estate empire built by Crow’s father. The Supreme Court’s decision ultimately benefitted Trammell Crow Residential.

Thomas is facing heavy scrutiny following a series of ProPublica reports earlier this month that said he sold his childhood home to Crow and didn’t disclose the sale, and that he’s been accepting pricey vacations from Crow — without disclosing them — for over 20 years. 

This is, by any possible standard, worse than the conduct that convinced Earl Warren that Abe Fortas needed to go.

In related news, let us dispel with the fiction that Neil Gorsuch didn’t know what he was doing:

that reporter tunneled her way through Gorsuch's financial disclosures to find that house sale, THIS is what the form looked like.

any justice with a shady deal they're hoping will fly under the radar must be having some serious night sweats rn pic.twitter.com/YLoBuWFRPG— Hannah (@hannnahmmarie) April 25, 2023

The Federalist Society industrial-legal complex is a great racket. Truly one of the very best,