Supreme Court justices have received nearly $5 million in gifts since the early 2000s, and one justice in particular, Justice Clarence Thomas, is responsible for almost all of it.
Data released Thursday by watchdog group Fix the Court reveals a list of gifts judges have received since January 2004. The dataset was released ahead of the expected release of judges’ financial disclosure reports on Friday.
Thomas, appointed to the high court by former President George HW Bush, made headlines last year after an investigation found he had taken dozens of trips paid for by distinguished billionaire friends.
According to data compiled by Fix the Court, since 2004, Thomas has accepted $4,042,286, or 193 gifts. The group reported that, for Thomas, there are another 126 “probable but unconfirmed gifts.”
Of the nearly 200 in attendance, the group said Thomas reported only 27 of those in attendance in his financial disclosures.
The data set included current and former judges dating back to 2004, putting their total donations, including Thomas’s, at about $4.7 million.
“Supreme Court justices should not be accepting gifts, let alone the hundreds of gifts worth millions of dollars they have received over the years,” said Gabe Roth of Fix the Court in a statement. “Civil servants who earn four times the local average salary, and who can earn millions writing books on any topic they want, can afford to pay for their own vacations, vehicles, hunting trips and club memberships.”
Roth continued, arguing that there is influence in who gives gifts to judges and what they buy with their “generosity.”
“The ethical crisis in the courtroom will not begin to abate until judges adopt stricter rules for accepting gifts,” he said.
The watchdog group acknowledged that total donation calculations may be lower than is actually true. For example, the group was unable to verify a hunting lodge where Justice Antonin Scalia stayed, and Scalia, along with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and William Rehnquist, died in office, so the numbers “may be an underestimate.”
Scalia received the second-highest total in gifts, at $210,164, from January 2004 until his death in 2016.
The list of gifts comes after Democrats asked Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases related to January 6 and former President Trump currently before the court, in light of reports that a “Stop the Steal” flag was raised outside his home after the attack. at the Capitol.
Last week, Alito rejected calls for him to step aside from the cases.
Alito received the third-most gifts, with $170,095, from his first day, Jan. 31, 2006, to the present day, according to the data.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
