Harlan Crow, who gave lavish trips to Clarence Thomas, has donated $13M to GOP

WASHINGTON — Harlan Crow, the Dallas investor whose lavish secret trips with Justice Clarence Thomas have sparked an intense debate about Supreme Court ethics, is a GOP megadonor with many friends in high places.

In the last three decades, the billionaire real estate magnate has donated $14.7 million to candidates and campaign committees, including at least $13 million to Republicans.

His largesse is probably far higher. As a co-founder of Club for Growth, an influential anti-tax group whose beneficiaries include Sen. Ted Cruz, he has given unknown but likely huge sums of “dark money” that isn’t subject to disclosure.

For the donations that are listed on federal and state reports, the recipient list is a who’s who that includes the last three governors of Texas, the state’s last four senators, and dozens of Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate.

In Austin, Crow has bet heavily on Gov. Greg Abbott — $216,800 in all, starting with $20,000 in late 2001 when, as a former justice on the Texas Supreme Court, Abbott was running for attorney general.

Unlike federal law, Texas has no cap on donations, so whopping checks are not unusual.

Patterns are hard to discern in Crow’s outlays.

Records from the Federal Election Commission and OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics, show donations to some of the most conservative Republicans on the ballot, and to moderates from both parties.

In the last three years, Crow has given $20,000 to Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo, a target of the GOP House campaign arm to which Crow has given $1.4 million.

Cuellar is among the most conservative Democrats in Congress, a high-ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, and the only Texas Democrat in Congress on Crow’s donation list.

Crow has also donated $25,000 to Rep. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio, the most moderate Texas Republican in Congress. He’s one of 14 of 25 Texas Republicans in the House who count Crow as a donor.

In 2012 alone, Crow maxed out to Louie Gohmert, the outspoken Tyler tea partier who left Congress in January.

He also backed a pair of congenial Utah Republicans, Sen. Orrin Hatch and Jon Huntsman Jr., a former governor who served as ambassador to China under Democratic President Barack Obama.

Crow has given $1.1 million to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which aids candidates for Senate, and $700,000 to the Republican National Committee.

Roughly $10 million of Crow’s donations have gone to federal candidates and committees since 1990. Most is in his name. Some is from his wife, Kathy Crow.

Records compiled by OpenSecrets show $4.7 million at the state level, all but $355,000 in Texas, where Crow has supported generations of GOP leaders. A number of times, beneficiaries ended up as rivals:

There are notable omissions, too.

Crow has given nothing to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick or state Attorney General Ken Paxton, for instance.

Undisclosed luxury trips

Crow, 74, is chairman of one of North Texas’ most successful private investment firms, Crow Holdings, which has almost $29 billion in assets under management, including real estate and securities. His late father, the legendary Trammell Crow, developed the Dallas Market Center, Atlanta’s Peachtree Center and San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center.

On Thursday, a ProPublica investigation revealed that Crow has provided numerous luxury trips to Thomas, none of which the justice disclosed.

Through a spokesman, Crow declined to discuss their relationship or how he chooses recipients for campaign donations.

In a written statement, Crow called the Thomases “dear friends” since 1996 and the justice “one of the greatest Americans of our time.”

“Justice Thomas and Ginni never asked for any of this hospitality. We have never asked about a pending or lower court case, and Justice Thomas has never discussed one, and we have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue,” he said.

Nor, he added, did any other guest on these trips, “and I would never invite anyone who I believe had any intention of doing that.”

In a statement released by the court on Friday, Thomas defended the lack of disclosure, saying that based on advice from other jurists early in his tenure, he believed that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”

“Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends … .As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them,” he said.

Calls were already mounting in Congress and the judicial branch for tighter ethics disclosure rules for judges. Thomas vowed to comply with whatever guidelines are in place.

Beyond Texas

Outside Texas, Crow’s biggest campaign donations have been:

Some notable donations on the Democratic side:

The Bush family:

There’s no sign of Crow supporting Donald Trump financially.

He and his wife have given over $30,000 to Liz Cheney — the former Wyoming congresswoman who became a pariah within the GOP by voting to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, melee at the U.S. Capitol.

Over a third of that came after the impeachment vote, as she struggled to keep her seat over Trump’s opposition.

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