Justice Thomas recused himself from considering a case brought to the Court by John Eastman during the 2023-2024 term (Eastman v. Thompson). He did not disclose the reason for his recusal.
Justice Thomas has not recused himself from any pending cases in the 2023-2024 term for a conflict of interest.
As ProPublica has reported, Thomas has had a “yearslong, personal relationship with the Koch Brothers,” which has “developed over years of trips to the Bohemian Grove, a secretive all-men’s retreat in Northern California. Thomas has been a regular at the Grove for two decades, where he stayed in a small camp with real estate billionaire Harlan Crow and the Kochs, according to records and people who’ve spent time with him there.” Justice Thomas has secretly attended at least two Koch donor summits, which, as ProPublica puts it, “puts Thomas in the extraordinary position of having served as a fundraising draw for a network that has brought cases before the Supreme Court, including one of the most closely watched of the upcoming term.” That case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, was filed by a group steered by Koch’s top lieutenants and counsel and whose “volunteer” lawyers all work for Koch’s Americans for Prosperity. AFP Vice President of Legal and Judicial Strategy Casey Mattox posted last year: “By now you may know that the Supreme Court will hear our Cause of Action team’s case asking the Court to overturn the ‘Chevron doctrine.’”).
Harlan Crow is the real estate mogul whose frequent gifts of luxury travel to Justice Thomas, who kept the gifts secret, “have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.” Among these undisclosed gifts are superyacht trips across the globe (on which Thomas and Crow were sometimes joined by Crow’s wife Kathy), flights on Crow’s luxury jet, and regular trips to Crow’s posh private resort in the Adirondacks. Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas have gone together to the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive all-male retreat in California, and Crow funded the private school tuition for a child in Clarence Thomas’ care. Harlan Crow also bought three properties from Clarence Thomas and his relatives (which Thomas failed to disclose), including the house Thomas’ mother still lives in (rent-free and renovated by Crow). Crow also gave $500,000 to Ginni Thomas’s group Liberty Central, which Leonard Leo was on the board of and which attacked the Affordable Care Act — a law Clarence Thomas later ruled against. That half million dollar gift that was used in part to fund Ginni’s salary. Kathy Crow also sits as a trustee overseeing the Manhattan Institute, a group that has filed numerous amicus briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Leonard Leo “help[ed] Thomas through his contentious confirmation process for the Supreme Court” in 1991. Leo has since “helped arrange for … Thomas to attend private donor retreats hosted by the Koch brothers” and has secretly arranged to pay an untold sum of at least $100,000 to Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas. That money from a donor kept secret from the public was funneled through a non-profit group called the Judicial Education Project/the 85 Fund/the Honest Elections Project, which is closely tied to Leo and which has filed numerous amicus briefs to the Court. Leo insisted that record-keeping relating to the payments to Ginni Thomas make “no mention of Ginni, of course.” Clarence Thomas is a godfather to one of Leo’s daughters.
Leo has shuttled money to numerous groups submitting amicus briefs to the court over the past nearly two decades, a role that has increased dramatically since Barre Seid gave him control of a $1.6 billion trust fund. Leo is now spending more than $100 million a year to help change the law in line with his agenda, including by funding numerous groups submitting amicus briefs aligned with his agenda to reverse key legal precedents of the past century.
Claremont Institute Senior Fellow and former President Michael Pack made a 2020 documentary film about Clarence Thomas to rebut the “narrative being told by his enemies” and closely coordinated with Clarence and Ginni Thomas, along with longtime Thomas advisor Mark Paoletta. In 2022, the Leonard Leo-tied Judicial Crisis Network ran $1.5 million in ads attacking Ketanji Brown Jackson and promoting the Thomas biopic, which was hosted on JusticeThomas.com, a website that listed Clarence Thomas as the copyright holder. JCN’s $1.5 million promotion of a film defending Thomas from criticism coincided with revelations that Ginni Thomas sent dozens of texts to Mark Meadows to try to overturn the 2020 election. Michael Pack also published a May 2023 op-ed in the Washington Examiner attacking ProPublica’s reporting on Thomas’ ethics conflicts. (The Washington Examiner is owned by Philip Anschutz.)
John Eastman is Founding Director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute. Eastman is best known as the champion of the legal scheme that directly resulted in the January 6, 2021 coup attempt. Leading up to the coup, Ginni Thomas exchanged emails with Eastman, a former Thomas clerk. In October 2023, Thomas recused from the Eastman Jan. 6 case, though he did not disclose the reason for recusal. Thomas did not recuse himself from litigation to allow the public to see communications with the White House, like Ginni’s texts, and was the sole dissent in that case allowing public access. He has also not recused in the cases asserting Trump is immune from prosecution or contending Trump is barred from office, despite Ginni Thomas’ role in trying to stop the 2020 election from being certified including her efforts to recruit false electors in Arizona and other states. Eastman has been indicted in Georgia on nine counts relating to his efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results on behalf of Trump.
As Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows played an instrumental role in attempts to overturn the 2020 election results that ultimately culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Meadows and Ginni Thomas exchanged at least 29 text messages between November 2020 and January 2021 in which Thomas repeatedly encouraged Meadows to overturn the election results. Texts from Ginni included:
“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! … You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice…” (Meadows replied: “I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.”)
“…release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down”
“Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”
According to the New York Times and ProPublica, prominent members of the Horatio Alger Association, an exclusive circle of wealthy business elites, have for decades bestowed lavish undisclosed gifts upon Thomas, who in turn has given the group rare access to the Supreme Court building, including personally hosting its annual new member induction ceremony at the Court each year. The Alger Association has publicly promoted the Thomas-hosted Supreme Court ceremony in its fundraising materials, an act “frowned upon by Court officials.” Clarence Thomas has received multiple awards from the Association and is listed as a member, “Class of 1992,” on their website.
Conservative talk radio host and Fox News personality Mark Levin has been a close ally of Justice Thomas and his wife Ginni (who has said she listens to Levin’s podcast) for well over a decade. In 2010, Ginni Thomas’s Liberty Central ran advertisements on Levin’s talk radio show. In 2011, Ginni Thomas interviewed Mark Levin for the Daily Caller. In 2018, Ginni Thomas awarded Levin a United In Purpose “Impact Award,” previously awarded to Mark Meadows and Leonard Leo.
