Senate Finance Chief blasts Clarence Thomas' billionaire friend for obstructing gift probe

This article originally appeared at Common Dreams. The Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee said Tuesday that billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow is trying to obstruct the panel's investigation into his gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is facing growing calls to resign for failing to disclose luxury vacations and other largesse from an individual with business before the high court. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., had asked Crow to provide the Senate Finance Committee with a "full accounting" of the gifts he provided to Thomas and the justice's family, but the billionaire made clear this week that he does not intend to voluntarily comply with Wyden's investigation. In a letter to Wyden earlier this week, an attorney for Crow claimed that the Senate finance chief's April request for detailed information about the gifts to Thomas raise "substantial separation of powers concerns"—an argument that Donald Trump's legal team used in its ultimately unsuccessful effort to stop Congress from obtaining years of the former president's tax returns. As Politico noted Tuesday, the finance committee's "next steps could include subpoenaing Crow for the requested records or using a section of the tax code that vests the chairs of Congress' tax committees with the authority to obtain a private citizen's tax returns directly from Treasury—a power that House Democrats used last year to publish the taxes of former President Donald Trump."