By Tierney Sneed | CNN
A Texas billionaire and GOP megadonor paid boarding school tuition for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ grandnephew, and the justice did not report the financial assistance for the child he helped raised on his annual disclosures, according to a new ProPublica report — the latest revelation raising ethical questions around the high court.
The ProPublica report on Thursday revealed that the billionaire Harlan Crow paid tuition for Mark Martin, who lived with Thomas’ family as a child and for whom the justice became a legal guardian. ProPublica cited a 2009 bank statement and an interview with a former administrator at the Georgia boarding school Martin attended.
The former administrator at the school, Hidden Lake Academy, told ProPublica that Crow paid for Martin’s tuition for the year or so Martin was at the boarding school. The administrator said, according to ProPublica, that he had been told by Crow that Crow also paid for Martin’s tuition at another school, the Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia, which is Crow’s alma mater.
A statement from Crow’s office did not address the payments for Martin’s tuition directly but said that he and his wife had “supported many young Americans through scholarship and other programs at a variety of schools, including his alma mater.”
A friend and defender of Thomas, conservative lawyer Mark Paoletta, said on Twitter that Crow paid for the first year that Martin spent Randolph-Macon Academy and for the year he spent at Hidden Lake. Paoletta denied that Thomas ran afoul of the court’s financial disclosures rules by not reporting the payments, arguing that Martin did not qualify as a legal dependent under the federal ethics law in question.
However, on the justice’s 2002 financial disclosure submission, Thomas reported as a gift $5,000 from another couple that was characterized as an “Education gift to Mark Martin.”
The Supreme Court’s press office did not respond to…
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