Billionaire Harlan Crow has declined to comply with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden’s request for a full accounting of Crow’s contributions to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
According to Ryan Carey, a spokesperson for Wyden (D-Ore.), the Senate tax chief received a “obstructive letter” late Monday night from Crow’s lawyer refusing to answer a series of questions about the billionaire’s financial arrangements with Thomas that Wyden posed to Crow in an April 24 letter.
The Finance Committee will react shortly. If Crow does not cooperate with the request, Wyden has already stated that he will “explore using other tools at the committee’s disposal.”
Wyden’s next steps could include subpoenaing Crow for the requested documents or utilising a section of the tax code that grants the chairs of Congress’ tax committees the authority to obtain a private citizen’s tax returns directly from Treasury — a power that House Democrats used last year to publish former President Donald Trump’s taxes.
Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Crapo, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, stated unequivocally on Tuesday that such measures would “undermine the independence of the Supreme Court and its individual Justices.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and 13 other Republican senators wrote to Wyden on Monday to express their opposition to Wyden’s request to Crow. The demands, according to GOP senators, amounted to intimidation of a private citizen with the ultimate purpose of discrediting Thomas.
“We reject this manufactured’ethics crisis’ at the Supreme Court as a ploy to further Democrats’ efforts to undermine public confidence and change the makeup of the Court,” the Republicans stated.
Wyden requested details on the gifts Crow spent on Thomas for over two decades, as documented by ProPublica, which included excursions aboard the billionaire’s superyacht to Indonesia, New Zealand, and Greece, as well as free use of his private jet.
Although Thomas failed to mention the donations on his annual disclosure forms, Wyden contended Crow would have been required to record them on his annual gift tax returns to the IRS.
