Billionaire GOP patron secretly paid private school tuition for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ nephew

The right-wing billionaire patron of Supreme Court Clarence Thomas secretly paid private school tuition for a great-nephew whom the judge and his wife raised as their own child, a new report revealed Thursday.

Harlan Crow forked over $6,000 for a single month in 2009 at north Georgia’s Hidden Lake Academy for Mark Martin, the great-nephew for whom Thomas was a legal guardian, bank records obtained by Pro Publica revealed.

The right-wing real estate mogul footed the entire bill for Martin’s one year at the plush boarding school, an administrator said, as well as for three additional years of pricey schooling at Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia.

The total amount was more than $150,000.

“Harlan picked up the tab,” said Christopher Grimwood, an ex-administrator at Hidden Lake who became close to Crow and Thomas.

Like other lavish gifts from Crow, Thomas failed to reveal the tuition payments on required financial disclosure forms, even though he did include similar earlier tuition payments for Martin provided by another friend.

Thomas did not respond to questions about the new revelations.

Crow did not confirm or deny the allegations. He portrayed the secret payments for Thomas as part of a pattern of generosity toward underprivileged kids.

Martin, who is now in his 30′s, said he doesn’t know who paid for his private schools, but defended his uncle and Crow.

“I think [Crow’s] intentions behind everything is just a friend and just a good person,” Martin told ProPublica.

Martin lived with Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, from the age of 6 because his father, a nephew of Clarence Thomas, had drug problems.

Clarence Thomas filed for legal guardianship of Martin and said he was “raising him as a son.”

Ethics experts say Thomas should have disclosed the tuition payments because they were effectively gifts to him, regardless of whether he was a legal dependent or guardian.

The private tuition payments is the latest revelation in a mushrooming ethics scandal that has rocked Thomas and the secretive court as a whole.

Thomas regularly accepted lavish vacations and gifts worth hundreds of thousands from Crow, including one island-hopping jaunt to Indonesia on a mega-yacht and private plane. He also sold the Georgia home his elderly mother lives in and two other properties to Crow.

Thomas did not disclose any of Crow’s largesse on mandatory annual financial disclosure forms.

Thomas has claimed that he was told by unnamed fellow judges that the extravagant gifts were not “reportable” because he and Crow are also personal friends. A lawyer who is close to Thomas said the tuition payments did not need to be reported because they were officially gifts to Martin and that the boy was not a legal dependent of Thomas.

Despite enjoying a secret million-dollar plus financial relationship, the court’s most right-wing justice failed to recuse himself from cases brought by conservative groups bankrolled by Crow.

Justice Neil Gorsuch also sold a Colorado property to a partner at a well-known law firm with myriad cases before the top court. The conservative judge disclosed the sale, which took place months after he won confirmation to the court, but omitted the buyer’s name.

The revelations have sparked widespread calls for tougher ethics rules for Supreme Court justices and more scattered calls for Thomas to resign or be impeached.

The Democratic-led Senate judiciary hearing is holding hearings on potential court reforms. Republican allies dismiss the revelations as partisan dirt.