According to newly discovered records and interviews, Thomas quietly advocated for the Supreme Court justices to be able to accept speaking fees and for a larger salary since he was struggling financially.
In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.
Thomas spoke at an off-the-record conservative meeting at the resort. On the journey home, he ended up sitting next to a Republican member of Congress. The legislator left the conversation fearing that Thomas would step down after the two men exchanged words.
Thomas told him that the judges of the Supreme Court should get paid more by Congress. "One or more justices will leave soon"—possibly within the next year—if lawmakers do nothing.
Thomas was paid $173,600 at the time, which is now over $300,000. However, he was among the least well-off members of the court, and throughout that time he made repeated attempts to increase his income. Thomas frequently brought up the idea of lifting the prohibition on judges delivering paid speeches in other private discussions.
ProPublica was able to collect records from the period that detailed Thomas's attempts, including a top court official's classified memo to Chief Justice William Rehnquist asking for advice on a "delicate matter."
Interviews and the documents provide a window into Thomas's financial conversations during a critical time in his leadership, when he was forging connections with a group of affluent backers.
Congress never approved a large rise for the justices or removed the prohibition on speaking fees. However, as ProPublica has revealed, Thomas accepted an abundance of gifts from friends and acquaintances in the years that followed, which seems to be unheard of in the Supreme Court's contemporary history. Some paid for big and modest life needs including tyres, car batteries, and private school tuition. His lifestyle was augmented by further presents from a group of extremely wealthy individuals, including complimentary overseas trips on the private plane and superyacht of Dallas real estate tycoon Harlan Crow.
It's still unclear exactly why so many individuals gave Thomas cash and other presents. There is no proof that the judge ever mentioned leaving Crow or his other affluent backers.
Professor George Priest of Yale Law School, who has vacationed with both Thomas and Crow, told ProPublica that he thinks Crow's kindness was more about making Thomas' life easier than trying to change Thomas' opinions. Priest stated, "He sees Thomas as a Supreme Court justice with a limited salary." Thus, he offers him benefits.
For this report, Thomas and Crow did not respond to inquiries. Crow, a significant Republican contributor, has indicated that Thomas is a close friend and has not had any matters heard by the Supreme Court since Thomas's appointment. Conservative billionaire David Sokol, who has flown Thomas on a private aircraft for vacations, claimed in a statement that he and Thomas had never talked about the justice's money or potential retirement date.
In 2000, Thomas made remarks to Florida Representative Cliff Stearns, a conservative politician with eleven years of congressional experience who occasionally interacted with the justice. They caused a frenzy of activity on Capitol Hill and in the judiciary. According to Stearns, "his significance as a conservative was paramount" in a recent interview. "We wanted to make sure he was getting paid fairly and that he was comfortable in his work."
The most significant positions in the federal government have a dynamic that is frequently criticised: officials can profit after leaving, but the positions pay significantly less than equivalent positions in the private sector. The regulated are sold advice by former regulators. Generals leave the military to work for contractors. Senators from the past find work lobbying Congress.
But a lifelong appointment to the Supreme Court does not come with a revolving-door paycheck. Typically, justices remain on the bench until they pass away, or past the age of 80. Justices received much higher compensation in 2000 than the ordinary American, as well as more than cabinet secretaries or members of Congress. Still, there was anger in the federal judiciary over judges' wages not keeping up with inflation. Supreme Court justices were paid less than young associates at elite law firms, where partners may make millions of dollars annually.
Although some of Thomas's colleagues were extraordinarily wealthy—Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was married to a highly compensated tax lawyer, and Justice Stephen Breyer was to the daughter of a wealthy British lord—Thomas was not wealthy; he was 43 years old and had worked for the government nearly his entire adult life when he was appointed to the court in 1991. Thomas has stated that at the time, he was still in debt from his law school education.
It's still unknown how exactly Thomas has spent his money over the years. Around the beginning of the 1990s, he made at least two significant purchases: a 5-acre home in the Virginia suburbs and a Corvette. According to property records, Thomas and his spouse, Ginni, borrowed all but $8,000, or less than 2% of the purchase price, when they bought the house for $522,000 a year after he entered the court.
Public documents indicate some financial hardship. The pair often took out larger loans over the first ten years of his administration, including a $50,000 consumer loan and a $100,000 credit line on their home. Thomas' life was drastically altered in January 1998 when he adopted his 6-year-old grandnephew, acting as his legal guardian and rearing him as a son. The youngster attended several private schools thanks to the Thomases.
Thomas made the trip to the beach resort in Georgia in the beginning of January 2000. Thomas was in town to give the keynote address at Awakening, a "conservative thought weekend" that included panel discussions with politicians and businesspeople, golf, and shooting instruction. (Ernest Taylor, the yearly event's creator and organiser, informed ProPublica that the group covered the cost of Thomas' travel. Thomas appears to have broken federal disclosure requirements by failing to declare his attendance at the conservative conference despite receiving 11 free excursions that year, the most of which were to schools and universities, on his yearly financial declaration.)
While returning from Awakening on a commercial airline, Thomas spoke with the Republican lawmaker Stearns the possibility of justices retiring. After the trip, concerned, Stearns promised Thomas in a letter that he "will look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of The Supreme Court."
Stearns added, "As we agreed, having the constitution properly interpreted is worth a lot to Americans." "Here, too, we need to have the right incentives."
Stearns' office promptly enlisted the assistance of a lobbying firm that was working on the matter, and he made a speech on the House floor concerning the erosion of judges' pay due to inflation. The heads of many judges' associations met and heard Thomas' warning regarding resignations. L. Ralph Mecham, the highest ranking administrative official in the judiciary at the time, sent Rehnquist, his boss, a memo outlining Thomas's grievances.
Mecham described Justice Thomas's interaction with Stearns as follows: "I understand that Justice Thomas clearly told him that in his view departures would occur within the next year or so." Mecham expressed concern that congressional Democrats may reject a raise "from a tactical point of view" if they believed that the goal was to maintain Justices Scalia and Thomas on the court. (Scalia was one of the less affluent justices and had nine children. Mecham, Rehnquist, and Scalia have since passed away.)
Rehnquist may or may not have replied. A few months later, Rehnquist made "the need to increase judicial salaries the most pressing issue facing the Judiciary" the centrepiece of his yearly year-end report.
Several people close to Thomas told ProPublica they believed that it was implausible the justice would ever retire early, and that he may have exaggerated his concerns to bolster the case for a raise. But around 2000, chatter that Thomas was dissatisfied about money circulated through conservative legal circles and on Capitol Hill, according to interviews with prominent attorneys, former members of Congress and Thomas’ friends. “It was clear he was unhappy with his financial situation and his salary,” one friend said.
In a recent interview, former senator Trent Lott, the Republican Senate majority leader at the time, said that there were grave worries at the time that Thomas or other justices would depart.
There was scarcely any indication to the public that these kinds of talks regarding Thomas were taking place in Washington. In a 2001 address celebrating the importance of public service, Thomas did make a passing reference to government salary. "For the money they pay, the job is not worth doing. He declared, "It's not worth doing for the grief." "However, it is worthwhile to pursue the principle."
At that same time, Thomas was advocating for the reinstatement of the ban on paid speeches for justices, which had been in place since the 1980s. According to Mecham's memo, Thomas had multiple conversations about easing the ban with appellate Judge David Hansen, the head of the judiciary's committee that represents the party before Congress on matters such as compensation.
Midway through 2000, a funding bill was subtly amended to include a clause lifting the restriction on judges at the request of Senator Mitch McConnell. The reason behind McConnell's proposal was examined by the legal media. The "honorarium ban makes no difference to me," Scalia said in response to the Legal Times' story that the bill had been called the "Keep Scalia on the Court" law. He further refuted the idea that he would ever leave the court for financial gain. (The prohibition never ended. When contacted for comment, McConnell remained silent.)
Thomas looks to have had a significant improvement in his financial circumstances during his second ten years on the court. He broke records for justices at the time when he earned the first installments of a $1.5 million advance for his memoir in 2003. By then, Ginni Thomas, a former congressional staffer, was making low six-figure income working for the Heritage Foundation.
Throughout the 2000s, Thomas also got a large number of pricey gifts, often from acquaintances he had met just moments before. The Thomas biography "Supreme Discomfort" states that in 2001, while having his RV serviced outside of Tampa, Thomas met Earl Dixon, the proprietor of a Florida pest control business. Dixon offered Thomas $5,000 the following year to help with his grandnephew's tuition. In his annual disclosure form, Thomas disclosed the payout.
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