It was 2004 when the Los Angeles Times announced that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted expensive gifts and private plane travel paid for by Harlan Crow, a wealthy Texas real estate investor and prominent Republican donor.

The gifts included a Bible that once belonged to abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a $19,000 gift from Thomas, and a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln.

“I just knew he was a fan of Frederick Douglass, and I saw that item become available at auction and I bought it for him,” Crow explained at the time.

He also flew Thomas on his personal plane to Northern California to be his guest at the Bohemian Grove, which held all-male retreats for government and business leaders.

Thomas declined to comment on the article, but it had an impact: Thomas seems to have continued to accept free travel from his wealthy friend. But he stopped revealing it.

On Thursday, ProPublica reported that Thomas and his wife, Ginni, have enjoyed lavish trips around the world at Crow’s expense in recent years, including “nine days of island hopping” off the coast of Indonesia in 2019 aboard a 162-foot “superyacht.” by a coterie of servants and a private boss.”

That’s in stark contrast to the way Thomas often speaks publicly about his summer travels, describing how he drives a blue RV and stays at campgrounds.

But Pro-Publica reported that his summer travels include regular stays at private resorts paid for by Crow, including at Crow’s ranch in East Texas and his resort in the Adirondacks.

“The magnitude and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in modern U.S. Supreme Court history,” wrote ProPublica, adding “these trips were nowhere to be found in Thomas’s financial disclosures.

It remains unclear whether Thomas violated any law or regulation by accepting such gifts and not disclosing them.

Since 1978, the Ethics in Government Act has required judges and judges to report travel expenses and other expenses provided to them by groups, universities and other similar entities. However, it contains an exception for the “personal hospitality of an individual”, as long as the trip is not on official business.

“Justice Thomas and Ginni never asked for this hospitality,” Crow said in a statement to ProPublica. He added that we “never asked about a pending or lower court case, and Judge Thomas never discussed one.”

Ethics advocates are frustrated that the court and Congress have failed to enforce stricter rules for the nation’s top judges. They say Thomas and his wife illustrate the need for more scrutiny.

Ginni Thomas is a longtime conservative activist in Washington who sought to reverse President Trump’s 2020 election loss, including by communicating with Trump White House aides and state election officials.

“We’ve been here before,” Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, told an advocate for court reform. “Clarence Thomas has been making these trips for decades and not publicizing them.”

In his recent annual disclosure statements, Thomas ticked a box indicating that he had no gifts to report.

In response to the ProPublica story, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) tweeted, “the highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standard. Our country is putting our country on the Supreme Court. Time for an enforceable code of conduct for judges.”

Last month, the federal court’s policy group announced slightly stricter standards for reporting travel on private jets and accommodations at private resorts that operate commercially.

While those rules could lead to further disclosures next year, they would not regulate or prohibit such travel.

Roth said ProPublica’s report makes it clear that “the personal hospitality rules the judiciary passed last month don’t go far enough: The Supreme Court and lower courts need the same, if not stricter, rules on gifts and travel than members of Congress. That means a judicial ethics office to pre-approve sponsored travel regardless of who pays the bill, even a “friend.”