Friendship of Justice and Magnate Puts Focus on Ethics
By MIKE McINTIRE
New York Times
June 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/us/politics/19thomas.html

Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood
cannery where Justice Clarence Thomas's mother worked,
on the site of the old cannery. Mr. Varn said Justice
Thomas put him in touch with a buyer to restore the
property and build a museum.

Mr. Varn lived at the old cannery site, a collection of
crumbling buildings on a salt marsh just down the road
from a sign heralding this remote coastal community
outside Savannah as Justice Thomas's birthplace. The
justice asked about plans for the property, and Mr. Varn
said he hoped it could be preserved.

"And Clarence said, `Well, I've got a friend I'm going
to put you in touch with,' " Mr. Varn recalled, adding
that he was later told by others not to identify the
friend.

The publicity-shy friend turned out to be Harlan Crow, a
Dallas real estate magnate and a major contributor to
conservative causes. Mr. Crow stepped in to finance the
multimillion-dollar purchase and restoration of the
cannery, featuring a museum about the culture and
history of Pin Point that has become a pet project of
Justice Thomas's.

The project throws a spotlight on an unusual, and
ethically sensitive, friendship that appears to be
markedly different from those of other justices on the
nation's highest court.

The two men met in the mid-1990s, a few years after
Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow
has done many favors for the justice and his wife,
Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project
dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible
that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly
providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-
related group. They have also spent time together at
gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople
at Mr. Crow's Adirondacks estate and his camp in East
Texas.

In several instances, news reports of Mr. Crow's largess
provoked controversy and questions, adding fuel to a
rising debate about Supreme Court ethics. But Mr. Crow's
financing of the museum, his largest such act of
generosity, previously unreported, raises the sharpest
questions yet - both about Justice Thomas's
extrajudicial activities and about the extent to which
the justices should remain exempt from the code of
conduct for federal judges.

Although the Supreme Court is not bound by the code,
justices have said they adhere to it. Legal ethicists
differed on whether Justice Thomas's dealings with Mr.
Crow pose a problem under the code. But they agreed that
one facet of the relationship was both unusual and
important in weighing any ethical implications: Justice
Thomas's role in Mr. Crow's donation for the museum.

The code says judges "should not personally participate"
in raising money for charitable endeavors, out of
concern that donors might feel pressured to give or
entitled to favorable treatment from the judge. In
addition, judges are not even supposed to know who
donates to projects honoring them.

While the nonprofit Pin Point museum is not intended to
honor Justice Thomas, people involved in the project
said his role in the community's history would
inevitably be part of it, and he participated in a
documentary film that is to accompany the exhibits.

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