The $267,230 RV Clarence Thomas 'scrimped and saved to afford' was financed by wealthy friend: report
The questions surrounding United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas' financial relationships with wealthy conservative donors sprouted a new tendril over the weekend, this time involving a swankily personalized motor coach that Thomas obtained in 1999.
"There he is behind the wheel during a rare 2007 interview with 60 Minutes, talking about how the steel-clad converted bus allows him to escape the 'meanness that you see in Washington," correspondents Jo Becker and Julie Tate recalled of Thomas in The New York Times on Saturday. "He regularly slips into his speeches his love of driving it through the American heartland — 'the part we fly over.' And in a documentary financed by conservative admirers, Justice Thomas, who was born into poverty in Georgia, waxes rhapsodic about the familiarity of spending time with the regular folks he meets along the way in R.V. parks and Walmart parking lots."
The potential problem, Becker and Tate explained, is that Thomas did not pay for the luxury camper himself, despite attesting that he did.
"His Prevost Marathon cost $267,230, according to title history records obtained by The New York Times. And Justice Thomas, who in the ensuing years would tell friends how he had scrimped and saved to afford the motor coach, did not buy it on his own," Becker and Tate wrote. "In fact, the purchase was underwritten, at least in part, by Anthony Welters, a close friend who made his fortune in the health care industry."
Welters, Becker and Tate continued, "provided Justice Thomas with financing that experts said a bank would have been unlikely to extend — not only because Justice Thomas was already carrying a lot of debt, but because the Marathon brand's high level of customization makes its used motor coaches difficult to value."
Although Welters conceded to the Times that he "loaned a friend money as I have other friends and family," neither he nor Thomas responded to additional inquiries on the matter.
"The two men's silence serves to obscure whether Justice Thomas had an obligation to report the arrangement under a federal ethics law that requires justices to disclose certain gifts, liabilities and other financial dealings that could pose conflicts of interest," Becker and Tate said. "Vehicle loans are generally exempt from those reporting requirements, as long as they are secured by the vehicle and the loan amount doesn’t exceed its purchase price. But private loans like the one between Mr. Welters and Justice Thomas can be deemed gifts or income to the borrower under the federal tax code if they don't hew to certain criteria: Essentially, experts said, the loan must have well-documented, commercially reasonable terms along the lines of what a bank would offer, and the borrower must adhere to those terms and pay back the principal and interest in full."
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Former President George W. Bush's chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter told the Times that despite the parallels between how gifts and taxes are disclosed, "justices just should not be accepting private loans from wealthy individuals outside their family."
Painter added that "You have to ask, why is a justice going to this private individual and not to a commercial lender, unless the justice is getting something he or she otherwise could not get?"
READ MORE: How billionaire Harlan Crow slashed his tax bill by taking Clarence Thomas on superyacht cruises
Becker's and Tate's complete analysis is available at this link (subscription required).
