A week ago, I wrote that Harlan Crow was practically begging the Senate Judiciary Committee for a subpoena. It looks like he’ll have to beg a little harder.
Recall that Crow, in a May 22 letter, stiffed the committee’s request for more information on his largesse to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, which came to light with ProPublica’s bombshell reporting on years of lavish gifts that the justice didn’t disclose. The Texas real estate magnate arrogantly responded to the committee, via his lawyer: “After careful consideration, we do not believe the Committee has the authority to investigate Mr. Crow’s personal friendship with Justice Clarence Thomas.”
Of course, the congressional committee isn’t investigating friendship, so Crow missed the mark on both the facts and the law. With Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., back in Washington to give the committee’s Democrats a majority, they could have cut to the chase and subpoenaed Crow.
Instead, the committee responded with a May 26 letter detailing why Crow’s claim that Congress can’t conduct oversight is incorrect.
It’s a convincing letter. But given the recipient, it doesn’t matter how convincing the letter is; Crow has apparently made up his mind not to comply. So the committee’s latest effort appears to be delaying an inevitable legal clash, unless Democrats intend to back down in the likely event that Crow remains unconvinced.
Yet it’s not an indefinite delay. The committee, led by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., gave Crow a new deadline of June 5 to respond. In light of the committee’s detailed explanation of why it has the right to conduct oversight here, a subpoena would be the logical response if Crow demurs again. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Blog newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump investigations and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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