in the west at the Walter
Cronkite school of journalism at
Arizona state university.
Geoff: The billionaire GOP donor
Harlan crow for several years
paid the pricey boarding school
tuition for a grand-nephew of
supreme court justice Clarence
Thomas.
That's according to exclusive
new reporting by propublica.
Thomas never disclosed in
official filings that crow was
paying tuition for the boy, who
Thomas at the time was raising
as his son.
Combined with propublica's
previous reporting on Thomas and
crow, it paints a picture of a
billionaire political donor
providing a supreme court
justice with lavish vacations
and purchasing a house where
Thomas' mother lives, apparently
rent free.
Josh Kaplan is among the
propublica reporters who broke
this story and joins us now.
Welcome back to the newshour.
We should say this was nearly 20
years ago justice Thomas says he
was raising his grandnephew as
his son because the boy's father
at the time was imprisoned in
connection with a drug case.
Walk us through your reporting
about this tuition arrangement
and justice Thomas's failure to
disclose it.
>> So we found that this
billionaire Republican megadonor
Harlan Crowe secretly paid
private school tuition for
Thomas's grandnephew, and as you
said, I mean, this was not a
distant relative of Thomas's, he
was his legal guardian.
He had taken custody of him at
the age of six.
And he said in his own words,
that he was raising him as a son
.
And then for high school, Thomas
sent the child to two boarding
schools, one in Georgia, one in
Virginia.
And Harlan Crowe secretly footed
the bill.
We've been reporting on crows
unusual role helping fund the
life of Thomas and his family.
And this adds a whole new
dimension to that.
Geoff: There is another unusual
dimension here in that justice
Thomas did not disclose that
Crowe was paying for tuition,
but he didn't disclose another
much less generous payment of
$5,000 by another friend that
was paid toward the tuition and
that raises the question, why
disclose one payment and not the
other?
>> Yeah, we had that question
too.
And we asked Thomas, he didn't
respond.
Ethics experts told us this can
be seen as evidence that he
understood his legal obligation
to disclose such gifts.
So there's a federal law passed
after watergate that requires
justices and most other
officials to report most gifts
to the public.
And experts told us that they
believe Thomas is required by
law to disclose these payments.
They said he could argue that
the gifts were to the child, not
to him, and so we didn't have
to, but they said that was far
-- far-fetched.
Children do not generally pay
their own tuition, it's the
legal guardians responsibility
to do so.
Geoff: Well, the supreme court
did not immediately respond to
our request for comment, but Mr.
Crowes office told your
publication in part in a
statement that reads this way,
"Harland crow has long been
passionate about the importance
of quality education and giving
back to those less fortunate,
especially at risk youth. It's
disappointing that those with
partisan political interests but
try to turn helping at-risk
youth with with tuition
assistance into something
nefarious or political."
He is not disputing the facts
presented in the story.
>> No, he is not.
A longtime friend of Thomas who
served as a lawyer for his wife
apparently paid for two years of
tuition, one at one school, one
at the other.
Geoff: I think in general one of
the things that gets lost is the
ethics of such payments.
How we should expect our public
what gifts we think are ok for
them to accept, especially in
secret.
We talked to a former white
house ethics lawyer for George
Bush who said this is way beyond
anything he has ever seen and
that when he was at the white
house if an official had
accepted what Thomas had, he
would have been fired.
Thank you for sharing your
reporting with us.
>> Thank you for having me.