Ian Hutchinson for Unsplash
This past week, Harlan Crow — a resident of Park Cities who lives on Preston Road, and whose family’s influence is all over Preston Hollow, East Dallas and regular Dallas — found himself at the center of political controversy after ProPublica published a “bombshell story revealing that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas secretly accepted luxury trips from the Dallas businessman,” as stated in the nonprofit investigative journalism outlet’s Thursday newsletter. Thomas did not respond to ProPublica’s questions but has since issued a response. He says he did nothing wrong, that he “was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from a close personal friend, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”
The 74-year-old Crow is chairman of private investment firm Crow Holdings.
His dad is the famous late Dallas real estate tycoon Trammell Crow, a graduate of East Dallas’ Woodrow Wilson High School and Southern Methodist University.
His brother, Trammell S. Crow, also an East Dallas guy, is a real estate investor and founder of EarthX, Dallas’ Earth Day event.
ProPublica reporters found evidence that, over the last 20-plus years, Justice Thomas has used Crow’s private jet, accompanied Crow on his private super-yacht to far-flung locales such as Indonesia and New Zealand, joined Crow at an exclusive all-male retreat in California and much more.
The journalists say Thomas did not report most of these trips on his annual financial disclosures. “Ethics experts we spoke to said that the law clearly requires disclosure for private jet flights, and that Thomas appears to have violated it,” they note in the ProPublica newsletter.
The story has sparked nationwide chatter and calls for investigations and stricter ethics rules.
In 2018 Crow was one of the top 11 people, couples or families who directly contributed to Dallas ISD trustee candidatessince 2011.
In 2013, according to the Dallas Morning News, Crow’s collection of historic documents and artifacts inspired “an unusual zoning request.” That’s when we learned about the paintings by Adolf Hitler on his mansion walls (the Nazi memorabilia has been of particular interest to the national press).
“His private collection has been viewed by college students, attendees at political fundraisers and guests to the Crow home,” the paper reports. That includes Clarence Thomas. In fact, the DMN reported back then that “Crow is friends with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and gave him Frederick Douglass’ Bible.”
It also reported that Crow “helped finance the Pin Point Heritage Museum in Georgia, which marks the area’s heritage and a cannery where Thomas’ mother worked.”
The LA Times reported on that Douglass Bible situation in 2004, they say, estimating it alone was worth $19,000. According to that outlet, the justice stopped disclosing gifts after that story 20 years ago.
Crow, who in 2009 attempted unsuccessfully to halt construction of the convention center hotel in Dallas, also owns one of the few Stradivarius violins in Dallas.
Crow is on the board of the George W. Bush Presidential Center at SMU and is a board member and donor to the Supreme Court Historical Society, among many other memberships and trustee posts.
