Clarence Thomas Ethics Review Critic to Appear Before Senate (1)

A federal judge who raised concerns more than a decade ago about how the US court system handled ethics complaints against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is set to testify this week before the US Senate.

US District Judge Mark Wolf is scheduled to appear Wednesday before a Judiciary Committee subcommittee chaired by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat.

Bloomberg News previously reported that Wolf — a former member of the US Judicial Conference, the federal court system leadership body — repeatedly questioned throughout 2012 why members weren’t receiving information about complaints filed against Thomas the year before and how they’d been resolved.

Read more: Justice Thomas Ethics Review Queried by US Court Leader in 2012

Whitehouse in recent weeks has pursued information about the 2011 complaints in light of new revelations about financial information that Thomas didn’t include in his annual disclosures. ProPublica last month detailed years of private plane and yacht trips Thomas accepted from billionaire Harlan Crow, property Crow purchased from the justice and his family, and private school tuition that Crow paid for Thomas’s grandnephew.

Thomas has said he was advised by unnamed individuals that he wasn’t required to report the trips with Crow, whom he described as a close friend. Crow has said he never sought to influence Thomas and disputed anything nefarious in the unreported financial transactions described by ProPublica.

In 2011, Congressional Democrats and public interest groups filed complaints with the Judicial Conference following reports that Thomas failed to disclose years of income earned by his wife Ginni Thomas; they also urged an investigation into private plane travel he received from Crow. The complaints were referred to a committee responsible for enforcing financial reporting rules, which cleared Thomas of “willful” wrongdoing.

Wolf, who was appointed to the federal bench in Massachusetts by President Ronald Reagan, didn’t appear to take a position on whether Thomas did anything wrong but criticized the committee’s failure to share information about the complaints with the conference.

Under federal law, the conference must refer cases to the US attorney general if there’s “reasonable cause” to believe a judge “willfully” violated the disclosure rules. By being kept in the dark, the body was potentially being prevented from carrying out its duty, Wolf wrote in 2012 letters to the conference. His protest didn’t affect the Thomas finding but prompted the financial disclosure committee to adopt a new policy of reporting “written public allegations of willful misconduct” to the leadership body.

Wolf did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his Senate appearance and what he intends to tell the committee. His 2012 letters, which were reviewed by Bloomberg News, were not included in a set of documents that the Judicial Conference provided to Whitehouse earlier this week. The documents did include part of a March 2013 internal report that summarized Wolf’s concerns and the later policy change.

US District Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, who serves as the director of the judiciary’s administrative arm as well as secretary of the Judicial Conference, wrote to Whitehouse in a letter that they were declining to share materials that reflected “the confidential exchange of views and information,” citing a need to protect that process.

Mauskopf also defended the financial disclosure committee’s 2011 actions, noting its leaders on several occasions went beyond standard procedure to tap a compliance subcommittee for additional review. After hearing Wolf’s concerns, the committee determined it didn’t need to amend its earlier reports but did separately provide notice to the Judicial Conference about its handling of the Thomas complaints. No other conference member raised concerns about the ethics review process, Mauskopf added.

(Updates with additional information from Judge Mauskopf’s letter to Senator Whitehouse.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Anthony Lin

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