Justice Clarence Thomas received between $270,000 to $750,000 within the past 17 years from a real estate company that no longer exists, Washington Post reports
Erin Schaff/Associated Press
- Clarence Thomas received rental income from a firm called Ginger Limited Partnership, WaPo reported.
- The real estate firm's partners included Thomas' wife Ginni Thomas, her parents, and her 3 siblings.
- The firm shut down in 2006, but Thomas continued to report income from the defunct company.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reported receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars of rental income from a real estate company since it dissolved more than a decade ago in 2006, according to The Washington Post.
The firm, Ginger Limited Partnership, was created in 1982 by his wife Ginni Thomas and her relatives, WaPo reported. Ginni, her parents, and her three siblings were partners at the firm, according to the report.
The company dissolved in 2006, and state records show a new firm was created the same year under a similar name, Ginger Holdings, LLC. But since then, Thomas reported receiving a total of $270,000 to $750,000 from the defunct firm, records reviewed by WaPo showed. The exact amounts are unknown because the disclosure forms only ask for a range to be reported.
A Supreme Court spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first discrepancy to be found in Thomas's disclosure reports. Recent ProPublica investigations revealed Thomas failed to report lavish vacations from GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow and a 2014 real estate deal in which Thomas sold his childhood home to Crow.
Federal law stipulates that government employees, including Supreme Court justices, must disclose real estate transactions worth more than $1,000.
The findings renewed calls from Democratic lawmakers to impeach the 74-year-old justice, but judiciary ethics experts told Insider removing Thomas is highly unlikely.
Unseating a lifetime appointed Supreme Court justice requires a similar process as removing a US president: A simple majority of the House of Representatives must vote to impeach, and then two-thirds of the Senate must vote to convict.
"One issue we have is that the only discipline of Supreme Court justices is the extreme form of impeachment or removal," Scott Lemieux, a professor of political science at the University of Washington previously told Insider. "Clarence Thomas could shoot someone on Pennsylvania Avenue and this Senate wouldn't remove him."
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