Supreme Court justices have received about $5 million in donations since the early 2000s, with Justice Clarence Thomas receiving nearly the entire amount.
data Released Thursday The watchdog group Fix the Court has published a list of gifts received by judges since January 2004. The data was released ahead of the scheduled release of judges’ financial disclosure reports on Friday.
Thomas, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by former President George H.W. Bush, made headlines last year when an investigation revealed he had taken dozens of trips paid for by his billionaire friends.
According to data compiled by Fix the Court, Thomas has received $4,042,286, or 193 gifts, since 2004. The organization reports there are an additional 126 “possible but unconfirmed” gifts to Thomas.
Of the roughly 200 gifts, Thomas reported only 27 on financial disclosure forms, the group said.
The data includes donations from current and former judges going back to 2004, and total contributions, including Thomas’, totaled about $4.7 million.
“Supreme Court justices should not receive hundreds of gifts worth millions of dollars over the years,” Fix the Court’s Gabe Ross said in a statement. “Public servants who earn four times the local average salary and make millions writing books on their favorite subjects can afford to pay for their own vacations, cars, hunting trips and club memberships.”
Ross went on to argue that this also has an impact on who gives gifts to judges and what they buy with their “generosity.”
“The Supreme Court’s ethics crisis will not ease until justices adopt stricter gift-acceptance rules,” he said.
The watchdog group acknowledged that its calculations of gift totals may be underestimated — for example, it was unable to locate the hunting lodge where Justice Antonin Scalia stayed, and because Scalia, along with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and William Rehnquist, died while in office, the figures “may be underestimated.”
Scalia was listed as having received $210,164 between January 2004 and his death in 2016, making him the second-largest donor.
The list of gifts was released after Democrats called on Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from ongoing cases related to the Jan. 6 attacks and former President Trump, following reports that a “Stop the Steal” flag had been flown outside Alito’s home after the Capitol storming.
Last week, Justice Alito rejected calls to recuse himself from these cases.
According to the data, Alito has received $170,095 in donations since his first day in office on Jan. 31, 2006, making him the third-largest donor.
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