Judicial organization declines to refer Clarence Thomas for DOJ investigation: report

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will not face a Justice Department investigation over his improper acceptance of extensive gifts and other favors from right-wing billionaires, which he failed to disclose on financial disclosure forms, according to media reports.

Citing questions of legal uncertainty, the body that governs federal courts – the Judicial Conference of the United States – refused to take up a request from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), who last year urged the organization to refer Thomas for a special counsel investigation.

“Because the Judicial Conference does not superintend the Supreme Court and because any effort to grant the Conference such authority would raise serious constitutional questions, one would expect Congress at a minimum to state any such directive clearly,” Judicial Conference Secretary Robert J. Conrad Jr. said, according to NBC News. “But no such express directive appears in this provision.”

The organization – which regulates judicial ethics and has the power to refer judges for a DOJ investigation but is unable to impeach or remove judges from the bench – sent identical letters Thursday to Whitehouse and Johnson informing them of the decision, NBC News reported.

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Conrad added in the letter that amended financial disclosure forms had been filed by Thomas “that address several issues identified in your letter,” the network said.

The lawmakers had asked the Judicial Conference to use their DOJ referral power to initiate an attorney general investigation of the associate justice after he became embroiled in ethical questions following a ProPublica report into free travel and gifts that were showered on him by billionaire Harlan Crow and others.

Whitehouse on Thursday slammed the group’s position, telling NBC News it “ultimately doesn’t address the only real question the Judicial Conference should’ve been focused on for the nearly two years it spent on this matter: Is there reasonable cause to believe that Justice Thomas willfully broke the disclosure law?”

“By all appearances, the judicial branch is shirking its statutory duty to hold a Supreme Court justice accountable for ethics violations,” Whitehouse added in a statement to the network.

The organization also declined Thursday to act on a similar request from Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought, who Trump picked to lead the Office of Management and Budget, over ethics allegations involving Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, NBC News said.