host: washington journal continues. welcome back to washington journal. we are joined now by justin elliott. he is a reporter from pro-public. we will be talking about clarence thomas and federal disclosure laws. welcome to the program. before we get into the meat of the topic, can you remind us about pro-public a, their

mission, and how it is funded? guest: we are a nonprofit nonpartisan news organization based in new york. we cover a whole range of topics,, business, politics, all kinds of things. we are funded by a combination of wealthy organizations, wealthy 80 donors and small nation owners. host: i wanted to talk about you. you have written several articles by justice clarence thomas. the latest one has this headline -- " billionaire harlan crow bought property from justice thomas. the justice did not disclose the deal." i will read you a quick quote. "in 2014 one of harlan crow's

companies bought a string of property in savanna, georgia. it was not a marquee acquisition, just an old single story home and 2 vacant lots down the road. what made it noteworthy where the people on the others of the deal, supreme court justice clarence thomas. it is the first instance of money flowing from the mega donor to the justice. what is the significance here? guest: that was actually the second article we did. both of them have been about financial entanglements between justice thomas and this texas billionaire political donor named harlan crow. the reason we are writing about this is justice thomas has an

extremely unusual relationship with harlan crow. our first story was about how harlan crow has been taking justice thomas on lavish, luxury vacations, flying justice thomas on his private jet, taking him on cruises around the world, places like indonesia and new zealand on kuro's -- on crow's super yacht. these gifts of travel were not disclosed by justice thomas as required by law. the second story you read an excerpt of was about a real estate deal between the two of them, also undisclosed by justice thomas where thomas purchased a house and -- where crow purchased a house and 2 vacant lots from justice thomas.

it was not disclosed omn the form -- the last thing i would say is that harlan crow is not just a businessman. he is somebody who has been deeply involved in funding political campaigns, and politics more generally with a special focus on funding groups that are trying to advance conservative areas. this is someone who has a history of seeking to influence politics and policy. he has a seemingly -- host: i will remind viewers, if you would like to call in you can do that now and asked justin elliott questions or make comments on this topic.

our lines are by party affiliation. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. and independents, (202) 748-8002 . what do we know about the deal itself? guest: that is a great question. we know the basics from public records. we know harlan crow or a company controlled by him paid $135,000 for house and 2 vacant lots in savannah partially owned by justice thomas. hte rest of the -- the rest of the property was owned by relatives of justice thomas. harlan crow, even though he is a real estate billionaire is not in the business of

buying small, single family homes. this is a house that clarence thomas spent part of his childhood in. harlan crow told us in a statement that one day he hoped to build a museum in that house about justice thomas's life. when a -- one of the things that made this deal unusual is that justice thomas's elderly mother had long lived in the house that harlan crow bought, which put crow in the very unusual position of possibly being the landlord to the mother of a supreme court justice. we are not even sure if landlord is the right word here because we are not sure if he is charging her rent. that is one you unusual aspect of the transaction. crow spent $35,000 making

improvements to this house after he bought it. it is not explained how making improvements would serve a project of historical preservation. crow did not directly answer our questions about why he bought these vacant lots from justice thomas, which are a block down the street. it is unclear why those would be necessary to make a museum. host: there is a federal disclosure law passed after watergate that requires justices and federal officials to disclose real estate deals over $1000. explain that law and how would it --how it applies here. guest: this is called the ethics in government act passed in the 1970's. it applies to federal officials,

specifically supreme court justices. it might sound kind of technical, but it is important. the idea is you want the public to have a sense of the finances and financial transactions of public officials in order to scrutinize potential public -- potential questions of influence. on this form that many officials have to file, you have to list certain assets. you have to disclose many sorts of financial deals, including the sale of real estate over $1000 in those cases. we talked to a number of ethics law experts who say it is clear cut that properties like this would have to be disclosed by justice thomas that happened back in 2014. you can look at the financial

disclosure for 2014 and the years around it, and this deal was never disclosed. we have not gotten a response from justice thomas and the supreme court about why it was not disclosed. there was a cnn story following our story that reported, based on an anonymous source that justice thomas does plan to amend his disclosure, but we have not seen that yet. host: what happens though? is there any enforcement, if you fail to report? guest: that is a great question. one of the larger things we are looking at is essentially that question, ethics and the supreme court. i spent many years writing about congress and the executive branch. there is an entire

infrastructure of ethics lawyers who monitor these disclosures, enforce the rules if they have been violated. in other parts of the government, you can be forced to amend your form. you could be fined. you could be fired. the law says there could be civil or criminal penalties, if you knowingly falsify these disclosures. with the supreme court, it is not clear that any of that exists. it is a little bit of a black box, frankly, whether anyone is even reading these forms when the justices submit them every year. unlike other parts of the federal judiciary, the supreme court does not have a code of conduct. they sort of are responsible for policing themselves. it is not clear how war whether they do -- how or whether they

do that. host: i want to share with you a segment of a wall street journal opinion piece by james taranto about this topic and about your article specifically. "my review of jusce thomas's disclosure connces me it was an honest mistake. on all other matters, including his real estate inheritance, he filed the instructions. prepared by the committee on financial disclosures. those instrtions don't make ear the statutory obligation to disclose the 2014 transaction. further, the propublica tried to cast justice thomas in bad

light when they followed the filing instructions without fail." what do you think of that? guest: a couple of thoughts. in terms of whether this was -- we try not to speculate or get inside people's heads. i'm not sure how james taranto was -- we try not to go there and stick to what we know are the reportable facts. in terms of the rule and the law, the key thing here in our mind and the many ethics lawyers we spoke to is not the instructions but the law. the law has not changed for many years. supreme court justices, it is

their job to be close and careful readers of legal texts. from everyone we talked to the law is quite clear on this, and it has not been in dispute. host: just on the side of how are you getting this information, justin? you have done several articles about justice thomas. things are not being reported. how are you finding out about this? guest: for our first story, more than two decades of -- first story that outlines more than two decades of luxury travel, we used a range of sources, things like flight records for mr. crow's private jet. we talked to a lot of service workers who had worked on harlan crow's super yacht, a 160 foot plus god with a crew of -- plus

got with a staff of 10 or 15 people. a whole range of sources that allowed them to put together this picture. this was fairly difficult reporting, in part because justice thomas had not been disclosing these gifts of travel for many years. i think that is why you did not come up for so many years -- why it did not come out for so many years. when you are on a super yacht, floating somewhere in the pacific ocean, not disclosing, these things can be kept under wraps. host: tony is up first, a republican in eastern pennsylvania. caller: good morning. i if you --i was wondering if

you ever inquired about george soros or mr. zuckerberg. these anonymous sources -- guest: yeah, not sure if you have something specific in mind regarding george soros, but what i would say in general is my colleagues and i are looking at other supreme court justices and the entire supreme court. if someone has any information -- and i am making this up -- that george soros is flying a justice around on his jet, we will write about it as true. host: our next caller is a

democrat. caller: i was wondering if anybody else on the supreme court has been looked at for the same thing you are looking at justice thomas for. i wonder if there are other things. i claim to be democrat, but this has nothing to do with the democratic values or anything. it's just to the idea that our supreme court is being wined and dined for various purposes. guest: yeah, in short, absolutely. my reporting colleagues and i are reporting on this as a whole. i have been covering the supreme court for a handful of months now. this happened to be the first thing we decided to publish. we are interested in the entire court. i am contractually obliged to

say that we welcome tips just in general, and you can find my contact information. there is an interesting history here. there was a major supreme court scandal, involving a liberal justice back in the 1960's. it was a camp located scandal. -- it was a complicated scandal. justice ford is giving back the money initially, but in the ensuing scandal he ended up resigning. i bring that up to say this is not something -- the question of financial entanglements with justices is not something that leads historically -- that is

historically associated with democratic versus republican appointed judges. this is matter of concern. host: let's go to kansas city, missouri next, republican, bruce. caller: i have read the wall street journal yesterday morning. there was a reporter, crediting the old question of the article and you're taking on clarence thomas. they cited examples of some other supreme court justices who had not filed proper papers. i would like to have you react to them. sure you have had plenty of time to read that article. i would like you to address some of the criticisms they leveled.

guest: i would say a couple things. i don't want to paraphrase the journal's op-ed, but i would point everyone to the cnn article published following ours that reported justice thomas plans to actually amend forms here. if that is accurate, i don't think that happens if there is no issue. on the amendments by other justices, it is true that there are plenty of examples of these disclosures being amended by justices appointed by both democrats and republicans. the examples i have seen of amendments are frankly rather inconsequential. we are talking about things like failing to report the purchase of an index fund mutual fund.

the reason we are writing about the gifts from harlan crow to justice thomas and this real estate deal is this is not an ordinary transaction like buying a mutual fund. this is a significant amount of money flowing from a politically active billionaire to a specific supreme court justice over many years, which is quite different, and failing to disclose that relationship and gifts is quite different from failing to report the purchase of a fund where there is no question of influence over the justice. host: our next caller is a democrat. caller: i think everything

clarence thomas received are bribed, it is obvious they are bribes. if we are allowing our supreme court, the highest court in our land, that makes the biggest decisions in our land to be bribed and compromised, it is over. i remember clarence thomas saying "when i first came someone told me i did not have to disclose these things." who told him that? let's investigate that justice. i'm so disgusted by this. i heard that the harlan crow guy along with clarence thomas were the ones who told donald trump who to put on the supreme court! even worse.

i remember him at the beginning with the whole anita hill thing. he is shady. he needs to be impeached and fired immediately. a supreme court justice cannot even take a free limo ride from somebody. host: any actual evidence of influence? guest: a few thoughts. we have no reporting that these are bribes. our stories are not claiming that. the caller is correct on at least one point. the rules for supreme court justices are much looser than they are for many other government officials. what we have been talking about so far is the question of mere disclosure of gifts. many of the ethics lawyers we

have spoken to have said that justice thomas has appeared to have repeatedly violated the disclosure lot. the question is whether a public official should be accepting gifts at all. i have had a government worker in an ordinary job told me they are not even allowed to have someone take them out to lunch. members of congress, we reported in our first story to accept the types of gifts justice thomas has taken would have to get formal preapproval from an ethics committee, and then would also have to disclose them. supreme court justices already are operating in an environment of fewer rules than many other officials, and we are really talking about disclosure here.

host: some democratic lawmakers have been talking about having hearings end investigations. what kind of power is congress actually have over the supreme court? guest: turns out to be a surprisingly fraud question. this law we are talking about, the ethics in government act passed back in the 1970's after watergate, and does explicitly apply to the supreme court. the senate judiciary committee, which is chaired by senator durbin of illinois has announced a hearing that i believe is scheduled for may 2 about supreme court ethics. they have invited chief justice roberts to appear. i have not gotten any word from the court yet on whether that is going to happen. there is actually a

constitutional question that this raised about a decade ago by chief justice robertson an annual report he writes about whether congress actually has the power to impose rules, like the disclosure requirements on the court. chief justice roberts publicly raised the question of whether that is constitutional. there may be some separation of power issues there. it has never been addressed by the supreme court, that i know of that when it comes to these ethics forms, whether or not congress has the power to impose these rules, the fact of the matter is justices have been filing these forms every year for many years. they sign them. if you pull it up online, look at the signing page, it says you are signing these forms. there are potential civil or

criminal penalties for falsifying information. they have been following this law. there are bills in congress introduced that would tighten up all these rules around both disclosure and acceptance of gifts, but we do not know what will happen with that at this point. host: phyllis is in martinsburg, virginia. caller: hello. i want to make a comment here. what we see on display here is the fact that the left hates and fears nothing more than a black conservative, and especially as we sealed this emphasis on clarence thomas, a black conservative with power. propublica is a completely left-wing organization. their attack on him shows that

emphasis from the left. what they are doing is a brett kavanaugh, a public smear job, coming out over and over with accusations, questions. oh we are just asking a question! we think there might have been an ethics violation! we are investigating this! they failed with kavanaugh. i think they will fail with thomas too. guest: a couple of things. we are actually not raising questions. these stories are providing answers. we probably talked to around attend employees who said justice thomas at least appears to be violating this ethics law on disclosure repeatedly. on the partisan allegation, i

would encourage the caller and anyone else interested to look up my stories over the year at propublica. one of my first investigations was on violation of travel rules by a democratic congressman related to a trip in taiwan. a democratic congressman in a swing district got led to a censure of this congressman. i have a long history of writing about the politics of both parties. host: frank is next in oceana, west virginia. caller: good morning. the way i look at it, just about everybody that we have got in congress, senators, all of them, they ain't nothing but critics. none of them will tell you the

truth. as far as the american people, they are not worried about us. host: what is going on with justice thomas? is it an outlier, or is it pretty much everyone in washington is doing it? guest: it is a good question. i don't want to get inside the justice's head. i don't know what his intentions are. in terms of other justices, other people in washington, i guess what i can say is from everything we have seen, this relationship between thomas and harlan crow is exceptionally unusual, at least with respect to what has come out publicly. to have a billionaire political donor providing officials with luxury travel that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for over 20 years is not

something that you see every day. if we find that with other justices we will write about it. host: let's talk to charlene next in bloomington, indiana. caller: could you talk a little bit about thomas's failure to disclose his wife's income. he wrote 0 on that line. i heard she received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the heritage foundation, and he also failed to disclose that. guest: the color is right. there is a history of both problems with justice thomas into the ethics disclosure laws. the caller is referring to an episode back in 2011. there were stories in politico and the new york times.

common cause was involved. justice thomas's wife ginni thomas had been employed by a number f think tanks -- number of think tanks and was drawing a salary from these organizations. there is nothing wrong with that, but justices are supposed to report these sources of their spouses come. justice thomas did not do that. he ended up amending a number of years of special disclosure forms, and i believe at the time he's 75 not failed to disclose it because of a "misun derstanding" of the rules. this has come up over the years, and we have had no full explanation as to why. host: our next caller is in

katy, texas. caller: your guest is describing, but he is not saying the words. this is another high-tech lynching of clarence thomas, like during his confirming. it is amazing. the man has a friend for 20 years. the man is not politically connected. the man does not have any actions going before the court. these are lifetime appointees. are you going to give up your friendships, the friends that you have for life because you have an office? it is ridiculous! they do not have the ethics rules written down. clarence thomas was very clear when he said "i am going to

report the gifts that he got." and i don't see anything wrong with that. congress has the ability to impeach. the legislative branch, the judicial, the executive branch all have oversight over the other. it is a three legged stool. they all support the whole. i do not see any issues going on with clarence thomas. the left just hates the man. they will always hit the man, and that is the bottom line. have a good day. host: what do you think, justin? guest: i would make a couple factual comments. in terms of the friendship between justice thomas and harlan crow, no one is arguing that a supreme court justice

should not be able to have friendships, it it also wouldn't be a question of giving up a friendship because growing thomas do not become friends until several years after learns thomas was a supreme court justice. they were not college roommates or anything like that. the caller said the rules are not written down. that is not true. the rules are written down in the law. the rules are very clearly written down about what sort of financial transactions and gifts you have to disclose. it might sound technical but the reason for these disclosure rules, and again i would stress these are not even rules that talk about what a supreme court justice can accept, it is simply about what they have to disclose when they accept a gifts.

the reason those rules are in place is so all of this can be out in the open, people can look at it, decide for themselves whether there is a potential conflict of interest, whether there is some sort of undue influence going on, and the last thing i would say is the caller said that, i believe harlan crow is not believed in politics. that is also not true. part of the reason we are writing about this is harlan crow is extremely involved in funding political campaigns as well as organizations like the federal society, the american enterprise institute, that among other things are engaged very much in legal advocacy and advocacy of particular legal theories related to the supreme court. host: let's go to detroit next. roland is an independent. caller: i'm no fan of clarence

thomas as an african-american. i think he has voted for -- against our best interests. i will ask the guest, how did you single out this guy? is it possibly because of what he said against the gay community? host: what do you think? guest: in terms of our reporting process, my colleague in this process really only started covering the supreme court 4 or

5 months ago. we got interested in this issue have traveled by supreme court justices. justice scalia passed away on a trip to a private hunting lodge in texas. there were questions of the time about what he was doing there, who was he with? we were reading about that and got interested in this travel issue, started looking at travel by multiple justices and frankly in terms of how the process works, we at least initially found the most newsworthy material related to justice thomas. i have only been covering the supreme court for 4 or 5 months. it takes a long time to produce these stories. we go where the facts lead us. we are very much still reporting on the court.

i encourage anyone who has any information about any justice that they believe is newsworthy to get in touch. host: we talked about how a lot of democratic lawmakers have been calling for investigations and hearings. what has been the response from republican lawmakers? guest: we have not heard too much yet, i believe. senator mcconnell was asked about it yesterday, and he did not say too much. i believe he said he thought that the chief justices could take care of any internal issues at the court. we saw senator mitt romney say that the stories were --say that if the stories were accurate, it was potentially troubling. assign interview with congressman matt gaetz, not about this specific episode, but

about the larger question about whether there should be some sort of code of conduct for the supreme court as there is with lower court federal judges, and the congressman said he was open to that. ew have certainly -- qw have certain -- we have certainly seen some conservative writers at the washington journal op-ed say there is no story here, but we linked to the primary source material when that is available. we think the facts are frankly not really in dispute here. host: james is in west point, mississippi, democrat. caller: good morning . host: go right ahead, james. caller: i have a comment i would like to make. i commend justin elliott for his investigative reporting. i think it is great that he is

exposing these people who are possibly violating the law. the republican party seems to want people on the left to report on when they are in ethics violations, but it is ok when people on the right violate ethics. there are too many instances where justice thomas has purposely failed to report things that would be considered ethical violations by the required reporting as justin has pointed out. i commend him for doing that work. i personally believe he needs to be impeached from the court. there are laws as one color pointed out where the congress can good -- one caller pointed out where the congress can do that thing.

there are too many issues with his wife's involvement. he should be impeached. host: go ahead, justin. guest: we have seen a handful of members of congress call for impeachment. given the control of congress, i do not see that happening anytime in the near future. these stories, which have been published recently in the last few weeks, and we have this hearing from the senate judiciary committee coming up may 2, so we are watching closely to see with the reaction of congress is. host: our next caller is in brandon, mississippi. hello? caller: i would like to ask justin why doesn't he go after

some of the bigger fish that are doing wrong, like nancy pelosi and her husband? they are now worth well over $300 million from stock buybacks from her husband knowing what to buy because she is the one who is going to tell him what to pick and not to hold what they can't. why are you investigating biden? reporters don't report anything about either one of those things. guest: i would say a couple of things. one my reporting partner on these things jeff kaplan, i encourage you to look up his work, he did a major investigation relating to the biden administration, the botched withdrawal of troops from afghanistan.

before i was writing about the supreme court, which has only been a few months at this point, i was covering a league of tax returns of the richest people in the country from the secret irs files where we read about tax avoidance by the ultra-wealthy. you should look at those stories. we wrote about george soros and how he was avoiding paying taxes. we wrote about michael bloomberg, another prominent democrat. we also wrote about prominent republicans. you will find a lot of examples about covering powerful democratic donors. host: denver, colorado. jean is an independent. caller: i would like to ask the

gentleman how many other supreme court justices has he investigated as to what they are possible violations of ethics have been? host: you have answered that a couple of times. guest: it is a fair question. what i would say is the way we started this was looking at the whole court. we found the most interesting material so far about justice thomas. to give folks a sense, to do stories like this took myself and 2 partners a few months to produce these stories. it is not the type of reporting where you publish -- you talk to the subjects of the stories and they tell you everything. we talked to dozens and dozens of people, service workers on harlan crow's yacht, getting

flight records from the faa. we lay out a lot of our sourcing in the story. i have only covered the supreme court for a handful of months at this point, so i have not fully reported on another justices, but we are still very much reporting on the court, and they're interested in any kind of financial entanglements between any justice, frankly and anyone in a position of influence and power like harlan crow. host: ross is in grimsley, tennessee. caller: hi. my name is roslyn. o don't really -- i don't really have a question, but more of a comment. i one to commend you first of all -- i want to commend you first of all, but i think

honestly that clarence thomas has showed us all who he is a long time ago in the anita hill issue. i think this is an issue of abusive power. i think the supreme court has an issue with itself. i think all of these things need to be judged for what they're worth and he needs to be impeached and resign his position. it has been one thing after another with him, his wife, and others. i'm a native mississippian. for the other two, i think we diametrically see the differences between the logic and not. you do not have anything to explain, justin. i am completely glad that you did this report. host: all right. we will try to get one more call in.

judy is in fort wayne host: indiana -- judy is in fort wayne, indiana, republican. can you be quick? caller: i will go to the bottom line. the whole point of this is so that he will be impeached and biden can appoint a democratic justice to the supreme court. i don't care who this man is, this justin. he chose to do this and he will find all he can to make justice thomas look bad. host: quick response? guest: i would say again that we are very actively reporting on the supreme court, myself and a whole team of reporters. if folks have information about either republican or democratic appointed justices receiving lavish gifts for many billionaires, we would like to hear about it and will write about it. host: justin elliott, pro public

a