For more than two decades, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has received six-figure gifts, free trips and donations in his name from Harlan Crow, a Texan billionaire and mega-donor to Republican causes. . These donations, which have come under increasing scrutiny following the adoption last month of new rules requiring Supreme Court justices to disclose these favors, included a painting of Thomas and his wife, payment for a statue of his eighth-grade teacher, and a donation to a portrait fund at Thomas’s alma mater, Yale Law School, according to a report by ProPublica.
Crow’s gifts to Thomas include a painting of the judge and his far-right activist wife Ginny Thomas, by Montreal artist Sharif Tarabay. Tarabay also made a hyper-realistic painting of Crow with Thomas and three other friends which hangs at Camp Topridge, the billionaire’s New York estate. Crow also donated $105,000 to Yale Law School, Thomas’ alma mater, for the Justice Thomas Portrait Fund, according to tax returns reviewed by ProPublica.
In a statement issued by the Supreme Court on April 7 and quoted by The New York Times, Thomas said he consulted with his colleagues before deciding not to disclose such gifts. “Early in my tenure on the court, I sought advice from my colleagues and other members of the judiciary, and I was told that this kind of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who had no business before the court, was not to report,” Thomas said. “I have endeavored to follow this attorney throughout my tenure and have always sought to comply with disclosure guidelines.”
Gifts from Harlan Crow and his wife Kathy on behalf of Thomas also include an £1,800 statue commemorating eighth grade justice teacher Sister Mary Virgilius Reidy. In 2021, Crow flew Thomas in his private jet to the statue’s unveiling ceremony at a cemetery in New Jersey.
“We have never asked about any case in progress or in a lower court, and Judge Thomas has never discussed it, and we have never sought to influence Judge Thomas on any legal or political matter” , Crow said in a statement to ProPublica. “Time and time again we have contributed to projects celebrating the life and legacy of Justice Thomas, just as we have done with other great leaders and important historical figures.”
Crow’s definitions of “great leaders” and “historically significant figures” have come under scrutiny following revelations of his gifts to Thomas. In addition to collecting thousands of historical documents, books and modern works of art (including pieces by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet), Crow owns two landscape paintings by Adolf Hitler, a signed copy of Mein Kampf and various Nazi memorabilia, according to Washingtonian And THE Dallas Morning News. Perhaps more bizarrely, the garden of his Dallas home features a collection of historic statues of former dictators – some of them disfigured after their fall from power – including Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin, Egyptian Hosni Mubarak, Cuban Fidel Castro and Romanian Nicolae Ceausescu.
“Most of the statues are communist,” Crow told the morning news in 2014 in reference to his sculpture garden of fallen despots, adding that he views his collections of objects as prompts “to tickle the brain for more”.
