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ProPublica Updates “Supreme Connections” Database With New Justice Disclosures

“We updated our “Supreme Connections” database on Wednesday with new entries from recently released financial disclosures from Supreme Court justices, as well as five filings from 2003 to 2007 we had previously been missing. “Supreme Connections” is our database that makes it easy for anyone to browse justices’ financial disclosures and to search for connections to people and companies mentioned within them. This update includes data from eight disclosures made public last Friday, covering the 2023 calendar year. It does not include data for Justice Samuel Alito, who received a 90-day extension. The latest update includes two 2019 vacations retroactively added by Justice Clarence Thomas, which were paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow and which the justice had previously failed to disclose. ProPublica was the first to reveal those and an array of other significant gifts from several billionaires. Thomas previously argued he did not need to disclose such gifts. We have also added information from a 2003 filing from Alito and information from Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2004-07 filings that were previously obtained by JudicialWatch and archived by the Internet Archive. While federal ethics law requires judges to file these disclosures each year, the law requires most of them to be destroyed after six years, making many disclosures from earlier years hard to find. In total, the update adds $50,000 worth of gifts disclosed (including concert tickets given to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson by Beyoncé herself), 18 new organizations and individuals, and more than 200 new connections, such as book deals, trips and reimbursements.

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