Harlan Crow Rejects Senate Records Request in Thomas Inquiry

Republican donor Harlan Crow is refusing to provide the Senate Finance Committee with financial records pertaining to his private yacht and jet travel.

Committee Chair Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for the information in a letter to Crow’s attorney Michael Bopp on Aug. 5 after records from the US Customs and Border Protection revealed Justice Clarence Thomas had taken additional trips on Crow’s yacht he never disclosed.

Wyden said the committee wanted the records as part of its investigation into whether Crow is evading or avoiding taxes by claiming business deductions on personal trips like those taken with Thomas.

“The committee seeks to understand the means and scale of Mr. Crow’s undisclosed largesse to Justice Thomas to inform several pieces of legislation,” Wyden said.

In a responding letter Wednesday, Bopp called that inquiry “an abusive and unlawful investigation” that, he said, is “an attempt to expose Crow’s “personal financial information solely because of his friendship with Justice Thomas.”

He accused the committee of policing rather than lawmaking, trying to audit Crow to facilitate partisan attacks on Thomas, and trying to investigate matters of judicial ethics that are outside its authority.

Wyden’s letter is “a thinly veiled attempt to harass Mr. Crow and his friend, Justice Clarence Thomas, a member of a coordinate branch of government,” Bopp said. “If this Letter reflected an effort to explore possible amendments to the Internal Revenue Code, there would be no need to drag in Justice Thomas, let alone refer to him forty-five times.”

If there was merit to the committee’s allegations that Crow’s yacht chartering business was used used to write off the cost of his family’s luxury travel, Bopp said the only appropriate avenue for adjudicating them would have been an IRS audit conducted during the long-expired limitations period.

“We respect the Committee’s important role in crafting legislation, Bopp said. “But the Letter and previous correspondence only confirm that this inquiry is not aimed at lawmaking. It is instead aimed at maligning Mr. Crow and Justice Thomas for political gain—an end that is never legitimate.”