Justice Thomas’s Benefactor Crow Rebuffs Senate on Ethics Probe

Harlan Crow, the Texas billionaire and GOP megadonor with close ties to Clarence Thomas, refused to answer questions from a Senate committee about his years of gifts to the Supreme Court justice.

Crow’s lawyers in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee argued that Congress does not have “the authority to investigate Mr. Crow’s personal friendship” with Thomas, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by Bloomberg News.

“The Committee has not identified a valid legislative purpose for its investigation and is not authorized to conduct an ethics investigation of a Supreme Court Justice,” wrote Crow’s lawyers, ...