The hospitality that did not make the forms

For more than 20 years, Justice Clarence Thomas took vacations paid for by Harlan Crow, a Texas real estate billionaire and Republican donor. The trips included private jet flights, cruises on Crow's superyacht, and a week most summers at Crow's resort in the Adirondack Mountains, according to reporting from ProPublica.^[2]

None of those trips showed up on the yearly disclosure forms Supreme Court justices are required to file.^[1] Legal ethics experts told ProPublica that a law passed after Watergate requires justices to report gifts like private jet travel, and that Thomas appears to have missed that requirement for two decades.^[2]

We are not alleging a crime. The Supreme Court, unlike the rest of the federal government, has mostly set its own ethics rules, and for years those rules were thin. Thomas later amended one year of his disclosure, writing that he had "inadvertently omitted" some of the trips.^[1] The gap between what Thomas received and what he reported is the story here, not an accusation, a paper trail.