The Senate Judiciary Committee dropped its investigation into businessman Harlan Crow on Thursday after he revealed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took three additional undisclosed trips that were not included in his revised financial disclosures.

The office of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Senate Judiciary chairman, said it obtained documents revealing previously undisclosed trips Thomas took from a subpoena to Texas-based real estate magnate Crow in November as part of an ethics investigation into the Supreme Court. Crow, who is a longtime friend of Thomas and also a GOP donor, struck a deal to give the committee seven years of information in exchange for the panel dropping its investigation into him.

“As a result of our investigation and subpoena authorization, we are providing the American public greater clarity on the extent of ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices and the need for ethics reform,” Durbin said in a statement.

The records revealed Thomas, who was nominated by George H.W. Bush in 1991, took private flights in 2017, 2019, and 2021 on a private jet with Crow, which he did not report in his financial disclosures.

In April 2023, the nonprofit organization outlet ProPublica, which is funded in part by various organizations that donate to watchdogs that have targeted Thomas, released several reports that applied a critical lens to lavish gifts Thomas had received from the GOP megadonor. However, the reports never alleged that Thomas broke his oath to remain impartial about any cases he was deciding on in the high court.

A statement from Crow’s office acknowledged the real estate magnate’s compliance with the committee despite “concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry.”

“Despite his serious and continued concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry, Mr. Crow engaged in good faith negotiations with the Committee from the beginning to resolve the matter,” a spokesman from Crow’s office told the Washington Examiner.

“As a condition of this agreement, the Committee agreed to end its probe with respect to Mr. Crow,” the real estate magnate’s office added.

The newly revealed travel by Thomas comes less than a week after Thomas amended his 2019 financial disclosure report to include trips to Bali, Indonesia, and Monte Rio, California, that he had accepted from Crow that year. Thomas wrote in his latest disclosure that the trips were “inadvertently omitted” at the time.

Democrats’ fixation on Thomas’s personal travels comes as several liberal lawmakers this week, including Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), revealed their ultimate goal in amplifying the so-called “ethics scandals” on the high court that were instigated by ProPublica‘s reporting.

“We have to expand the court to create balance and fairness. We need a binding, enforceable code of ethics to ensure accountability,” Pressley said, suggesting the current nine-member court should be increased, which would offset the current 6-3 Republican-appointed majority.

“We need investigations into Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and any others with a record of impropriety on the highest court in our nation,” Pressley added.

Some Democrats have also kept up their concerns about ethics in the Supreme Court as a pressure point to try and get Thomas and Alito to recuse themselves from key Supreme Court cases. Some of those cases involve former President Donald Trump, and Democrats have particularly objected to those two justices both because of Ginni Thomas’s text messages to Mark Meadows in the days after the 2020 election and recent reports about various flags flown at Alito’s house by his wife Martha-Ann.

In addition to Crow, the panel’s Democrats voted to issue a subpoena to conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo, who declined to comply with their demand for information, claiming that there was no basis for the subpoena.

Durbin said Thursday that if Chief Justice John Roberts refuses to create an enforceable code of ethics, the committee will seek legislation that would impose new ethical and financial rules.

Last month, Roberts told Durbin and fellow Democratic ethics hound Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) that he would “respectfully” decline the pair’s recent request for a private meeting to discuss their gripes over Thomas and Alito. 

After several years of deliberation over a code of conduct, the justices last year adopted a specific ethics code that the justices must consult, and Thomas has made efforts to amend his financial disclosures in instances where previously undisclosed trips were omitted.

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The federal judiciary already has oversight and accountability mechanisms to “hold judges and judiciary staff responsible for their conduct as government officials and for the management of public resources,” according to the Judicial Conference. Members of the Supreme Court can also be impeached from lifetime tenure on the bench by a two-thirds vote in the Senate.

The Washington Examiner reached out to Thomas for comment about the latest committee findings that relied on information from Crow.