Justice Clarence Thomas and Billionaire Harlan Crow.

Justice Clarence Thomas is a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Mr. Harlan Crow is a real estate magnate and a Billionaire.

For more than two decades, Justice Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews by ProPublica have shown. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuse of power.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Justice Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The NDR publishes the report today as reported by the CNN as an example of a model report for investigative journalists; to build their courage and resilience, with the hope of sustaining that age-long tradition and genre of journalism. The report on the ProPublica site was published with pictorial evidences of Justice Thomas, his wife and Billionaire Crow on some of those trips. The story is already generating national attention in the United States of America.

Recently, in Nigeria, when it was alleged that the Chief Justice of Nigeria Justice Olukayode Ariwoola traveled abroad and may have gone abroad to meet with the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, due to the seeming coincidence of the travel. Moreso, a photograph of Justice Ariwoola on a wheel chair at the departure lounge of the airport also surfaced about the same time. Hell was let loose and those who tried to make the conjectures out of the coincidence of the travels were almost lynched on the social media. Journalists have to be curious and dig into the dark alley of public officials and minimise evil done to the society.

It all started with a little curiosity.
A team of ProPublica reporters earlier this year began looking into the travel of various Supreme Court justices, not entirely sure what they would find, if anything. But after a little digging, the trio of journalists stumbled upon something that piqued their interest.

In fact, what they uncovered raised their eyebrows to such a degree that they believed the discovery was an explosive story in its own right: a trip that Clarence Thomas had taken aboard billionaire Harlan Crow’s private jet between Connecticut and Washington, D.C.

But their editors encouraged the team to keep working the story, Justin Elliot, a member of the three-person reporting team, told me by phone on Thursday. “So we started grinding,” Elliot explained.

From there, the story quickly grew in size and scope. “It snowballed,” Elliot said. Elliot and his co-authors, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski, assembled a spreadsheet comprised of hundreds of people, methodically contacting potential sources as they built the story.

“The progress was gratifyingly steady,” Elliot told me, cautioning, however, that “it was not easy.”

Easy or not, the final product that published on Thursday morning was unquestionably worth the effort. The bombshell report included stunning details that accuse Thomas of having accepted ultra- luxury vacations and private jet travel from a Republican mega donor for decades.

Even worse? “These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures,” the ProPublica team wrote. “His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said.”

The story landed with a bang, shaking the political world and immediately eliciting statements of serious concern from legal experts and Washington lawmakers. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, a Democrat, said in a statement that the report was “a call to action.” Durbin added that “the Senate Judiciary Committee will act.”

What ultimately happens remains to be seen. But the immense fallout has already underscored the importance of journalism produced by non-profit newsrooms like ProPublica.

“From my perspective as a reporter,” Elliot told me, “I feel so lucky to have the reporting resources and time resources to do a heavy lift like this. There are not that many places where you can do that anymore. So we are grateful to have jobs at Propublica.

“If there are any rich people reading,” Elliot added, “give your money to nonprofit journalism.

“ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. We dig deep into important issues, shining a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust — and we stick with those issues as long as it takes to hold power to account”.