 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Connor Goodwin. I'm the communications manager here at ProPublica, and I'd like to thank you for joining us today. For those who don't know us, ProPublica is a non-profit investigative newsroom dedicated to exposing abuses of power and betrayals of public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur real-world impact. Last Thursday, we published an investigation that revealed that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted luxury trips from billionaire Republican donor, Harlan Crow, virtually every year for over 20 years without disclosing them. A number of experts we interviewed said that Thomas broke long-standing norms for judges conduct, and several of those experts said his failure to report private jet flights appeared to violate federal disclosure laws. Thomas, for his part, issued a statement saying he'd consulted with unnamed members of the court who told him that he was not required to disclose such travel because it amounted to, quote, personal hospitality. The explosive story shook the nation, sparked national outrage, and created immediate impact. On Friday, Democratic lawmakers called for investigations and about to create stricter ethics rules for justices. And on Monday, yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced plans to hold a hearing in the coming days, quote, regarding the need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court's ethical standards, citing ProPublica's reporting. Joining us today is Josh Kaplan, one of the reporters behind the investigation and ProPublica editor-in-chief, Steve Engelberg. Before I hand it off to Steve, I just want to note that we received more than 700 audience questions ahead of time. We won't be able to hit them all, but we've identified common themes and are going to try and cover as much ground as possible. If you'd like to submit a question in today's session, you can do so by clicking the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen and typing it there. Thanks again for joining us. I'll let Steve take it from here. You guys can turn on your cameras now. Thanks. Welcome, everybody. I'm Steve Engelberg. I am the editor-in-chief at ProPublica, a job I've held for the last 10 years. I'd like to introduce to the audience Josh Kaplan, who has been a reporter with us for the last three years, joined us as a freelance journalist and a fellow at ProPublica from Washington, D.C., where he was writing a column about criminal justice for the Washington City paper. He holds a degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago, which I suppose may come in handy for some of the work that we're doing now. So Josh, tell us a little bit about how you and your partners on this story, Justin Elliott and Alex Meersky, got into this. What sort of got this started? Yeah, so we, you know, towards the end of last year, Justin and I, you know, we're starting to think about ways we could cover the judiciary and we're casting, frankly, probably too wide of a net. We were looking at all sorts of stories at once and we were filing records requests and combing through documents and there was one flight we found that caught our eye. You know, we found some evidence that seemed to indicate that Justice Thomas had flown on this billionaire Harlan Crowe's plane from D.C. to New Haven, Connecticut for what was roughly a three hour trip. It looked like a, you know, maybe a lunchtime appointment, we weren't sure what it was, and then flew back on the jet three hours later. It seemed, I mean, potentially newsworthy in its own right, but also that it was such a short trip for a private jet flight that it suggested to us like this might be part of a habit this might be part of a larger pattern, and we started really digging it. So tell us a little bit about I know many people on this conference have read the article but just tell us a little bit what were the high points of as things began when fall what were the sort of high points of what you found. So we found, I mean, the extent and frequency of what we found was was really surprising to us so we found that Justice Thomas has been accepting these luxury trips from Harlan Crowe virtually every year for 20 years and that includes flights on Crowe's large private jet that includes international services on a super yacht, regular vacations at his luxury resort in Adirondacks. You know, one of the more recent examples we found, you know, just one example was in 2019, Justice Thomas flew to Indonesia on Crowe's private jet and then spent nine days island hopping with him on a super yacht staffed by a private chef and a host of stewardesses. And, you know, we were told that if Thomas had chartered the plane and the yacht himself, the cost could have exceeded $500,000 for that trip. How do you report a story like that who do you who do you talk to I mean the clearly are not an enormous number of documents so how do you, how do you think about finding information about something like that. I mean, kind of the remarkable something I hadn't fully appreciated until we were deep into this is that to live this luxuriously. You have a lot of people involved in kind of mundane aspects of your life. You know, if I was to take you on United Air, and we rented a, you know, rooms in a nice hotel in Paris to be really hard to find. But, you know, crow has staff on his yacht crow has his staff at his private resort. He has all sorts of staff involved in coordinating different aspects of his life. And so we talked to we just started making calls and we had a spreadsheet of a few hundred names and, you know, talk to dozens of people from, you know, the staff on his yacht to members of the bohemian grove you know an Indonesian scuba diving instructor who spent time on crows yacht while Thomas was there. Fascinating. And I'm sure people talk to people so word gets around. And then there were some social media things I gather that proved helpful. We, you know, once we would, you know, had some inkling that Thomas might have gone to, you know, X location around X time we started scrubbing through all sorts of social media. Or another instance was, you know, we're staring at a photo we had of Arlene Crow in Indonesia. And we noticed that Harlan Crow was wearing a polo shirt that said had the the logo of his yacht and then said Indonesia. You know, summer 2019 or something like that. And we're like, does he make shirts for all of the trips and we asked his you know some people we've been talking to and they're like, yeah, you often does. And so we went down this rabbit hole of trying to find as many photos of Clarence Thomas as we could. And ultimately, you know, found a photo of him wearing one of these shirts. It didn't seem like a tech conference maybe, but it said Greek Islands March 2007, which was a trip we didn't know anything about until then. Fascinating. I guess in the modern world it's hard to move around without people noticing your photograph and you're particularly if you're famous. So you go at some point you do your reporting you look at the official disclosure forms that every justice files. And you look start looking for this, these trips. Are they there. None of the trips we found were disclosed by justice Thomas. So that raises raised an interesting question I know with ProPublica we have a policy we're very proud of that we, we notify people well before a story comes out what we're going to say we call it a no surprises letter we don't want anyone to ever be surprised by what they read about themselves or frankly anything that's important to them or their friends so we do that as a matter of course. So you and your colleagues sent a no surprises letter to Thomas asked him to explain is what what did he say back. Well so before we published, we sent him detailed questions and followed up repeatedly and he didn't respond to us. After he published. At least the statement which is actually fairly rare for justice Thomas in which he said that you know crow was a dear friend of his, and he said that early in his career he'd asked some of his colleagues, you know about the disclosure rules and they'd suggested to him that, you know, because Crow was a friend, and he didn't have business directly before the court that this was okay and they didn't need to disclose it. So sort of like a kind of hospitality exemption right if you have a college friend and you go stay in their house for the weekend you don't have to disclose the value of that state. Right and there's a there is a there's a personal hospitality exemption in the law. It in the disclosure law which is a ethics law that was passed after Watergate requires Supreme Court justices and many other government officials to disclose most gifts. It appears Thomas might have been referencing that, but you know after he released this statement we went to, you know, seven different ethics law experts including former ethics lawyers for Congress and for the White House. And all of them told us that the law clearly required that he disclose things like these private jet flights, and that if he is arguing that they were that they were exempt from disclosure, because they're personal hospitality that he's incorrect on on what the law requires. Well, let me ask you a question, neither one of us neither you nor I Josh are constitutional lawyers, nor would we play them on TV, but I mean, this is a law passed by the legislative branch and signed by the president's president I mean. So, does, how does one branch tell another branch what to do does this law really apply to the Supreme Court, as far as we know. Yes, in the sense it's interesting it's an important and interesting question so the, the, the law explicitly says that it applies to Supreme Court justices, and since it's been passed Supreme Court justices have been filing the annual financial disclosures that are required by the law. However, there's potentially a larger constitutional issue at play here so in 2011 Chief Justice john Roberts in an annual report talked about how there was some chatter at the time of there being more laws passed by Congress. Chief Justice Roberts said that the question has never been addressed as to whether Congress has the ability to impose rules on the Supreme Court, and he acknowledged that there were some rules that they did, and said that the justices had been complying with them, but he raised the question of whether this was actually something that they would be required to do if, if that if the law was challenged. And also if Congress had the power to impose more rules that which I think is, you know, very germane to our current moment. Right, very much in the air now. Let's go back a little bit so Clarence Thomas comes on the court in 1991 many of us will recall fairly controversial hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee then shared by Senator Joe Biden. He is confirmed. When do he and in Harlem pro cross paths and who is Harlem pro. So, they met a few years after justice Thomas went on the court and Harlem crow is a real estate tycoon based in Dallas, he, you know is an heir to his father's real estate fortune and he's been, you know an enormously successful businessman overseeing kind of his family's business real estate and investment empire. And he's also a major and influential figure in conservative politics he's long been a major Republican donor he's given over $10 million in disclose political contributions, and he's also given a dark money groups, exactly how much and exactly to who is not fully known, but we do know is that he has given millions of dollars to you know ideological efforts to shape the law and the judiciary and move them for the right so you know one group these donated to that I think many people on this call will know is the Federalist Society. And so, you know, sits on the boards of major pro business think tanks that you have scholars that advanced specific conservative legal theories, and who occasionally file amicus briefs with the Supreme Court. And the 2011 and john Robert Justice Justice Roberts writing, you know this paper that was sort of circulated at the time in regard to questions. I mean in fact, weren't some of those questions also at that point in 2011 being raised by what have been revealed about Thomas in that year. Yes. So I mean, Roberts does not specifically met, he does not mention Thomas in this in this writing, but a lot of court observers think that's what he was responding to so in 2011, the New York Times and political had a series of articles that were kind of the first revelations of the close ties between Justice Thomas and Harlan Crow, political had reported that Crow had given a, I believe a $500,000 donation to a tea party group that Thomas's wife had found it and which also paid her $120,000 salary. And then the Times kind of went through disclosures that you know he had disclosed but had never really been put in one place or examined or made sense of and also, you know, revealed that he had the crow had given half a million dollars, I think yeah half a million dollars to fund what was essentially a pet project of Thomas's to create a museum in the town he grew up at. That's fascinating. So, in one way, this was really on the sort of public record, a while ago, and the disclosure statements contain some information that became controversial. Did his disclosure statements continue to be detailed in any way at all was there anything on them after 2011 or what happened. Yeah, I mean so so Thomas used to be a lot more used to disclose a lot more back in the 90s actually in the 90s you actually he once disclosed a private jet flight from crow to the bohemian grove in California. And when you when these disclosures will get released to the public newspapers would write about it, and by around 2000 2004 ish he for the most part stop disclosing things he, I think recently just like in the last five seven years disclosed a gift, like a physical gift from crow I believe a bust of Frederick Douglass, but in terms of these these vacations travel. That has completely been absent from his, his, his required reports to the public. I'm going to say you and some audience questions one of the audience questions is about the experts we consulted and remember the audience asked, were they just Democrats were the Republicans and Democrats what were the political leanings of the folks that you and the team spoke with. We spoke with experts who'd served in both you know Republican and Democratic administrations. Some of them were, you know career ethics officials who'd served in both one for instance was George W bushes. He was the chief chief chief ethics lawyer during the Bush administration. So we tried to, we tried to ask as as wide a variety of people as we could who also had the kind of experience to, you know, to be in a place to have thought carefully about the law and understand it rigorously. And so I want to just go back to for a moment and sort of the, the ethical, you know, constructs around this we've talked a lot about the post Watergate federal law that requires all federal officials at a certain level to disclose aspects of their personal business and so on. What about judges are judges covered by anything and how does that work. Yeah, so so judges are covered by the same disclosure laws. They also have another document, and it's called the judiciary's code of conduct and this is this covers every federal judge below the Supreme Court, and there are, you know, some kind of specific practical rules or principles that are laid out around the accusal, when must a judge recuse themselves from a case. And there's also this is where a lot of the lofty broader ethical norms and standards for the judiciary judiciary are articulated so there are there. There's a lot of language in there, requiring judges to for instance, avoid even the appearance of impropriety, and to, you know, conduct themselves at all times in a way that promotes public confidence in their integrity and their independence. This is, you know, an enforceable document that there's a there's an administrative apparatus within the within the judiciary that can take disciplinary action if a judge is found to have violated the code. It explicitly does not apply to the Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court Roberts has said that the justices do consult this document for guidance he isn't saying that they, this is irrelevant to their behavior. A very interesting question from an audience member who was listening to a podcast put up by our colleagues at Slate who notes that correctly that the travel policy for high level judges, although not the Supreme Court was changed shortly before the release the article, and the Chief Justice John Roberts sits on the board that sets the policy. And the question is why was that not, and has that not been a big story. And I will remind listeners just before we get into that that remember that this document even if Roberts is involved, these policies do not apply to the Supreme Court so this is the judicial conference changing rules for all the judges except the Supreme Court but talk a little bit about why wasn't that a big deal at the time. We're talking about the financial changes in the financial disclosure rules. Yeah, and maybe you could go a little bit into what changed because it did seem, I think coincidentally as if the people making the new rules might have anticipated this because the rules specifically address travel questions so what did they change and why wasn't that much of a story at the time. Yeah, I mean there was some coverage of it I mean I should say the these financial disclosure guidelines do apply to justices because they are required to file financial disclosures, it's a bit of a separate thing from the ethical, you know, the broader ethical codes that apply to lower court judges. And what this what this update did is, you know, made explicit things that had basically laid out more specific scenarios as to when disclosure is required and when disclosure isn't. There was some genuine ambiguity in the judiciary until this update happened around questions like, you know, corporate ownership, you know, if I go to a, if I go to, you know, a resort that if I'm a justice and I go to resort that you can, you know, how do I determine if this is something that I have to disclose, or something that, you know, because because you're the one that's offering it to me and you own the resort. I can go there for I can go there for free and not let the public know about it. And so clarify questions like that it also but also I think there's been some some things lost in translation around this update. You know, all the ethics law experts we talked to did say that transportation has clearly always been required for judges for judges and justices to disclose it. And that includes private jet flights or cruises on a yacht, and the law hasn't changed. So this update did say that, you know, it makes us explicit, but everyone we've talked to all the lawyers we've talked to have said there was really never an interpretation of this that would lead you to conclude otherwise even before the recent update. So to state it in sort of plain language. You know, someday I retire and I have a, I have a I decide that I'm going to go out and play the lottery I win the lottery I decide to buy a mansion in Hawaii. And I invite one of the justices out if I send them the plane ticket that's a problem isn't it. Yes, can't do that. Theoretically if I own my my state that I bought with my lottery winnings. If they fly out there on their own, potentially it's not a discloseable event. Although I should say it's not a problem actually that that's a kind of a funny segue in that if they if you send them the plane ticket, and they don't disclose it that's a problem. However, there really are very, very few restrictions I want justices can accept. So if Thomas had done everything that we that we if if Thomas is vacations were exactly the same. He went on these extremely extravagant very regular trips around the world flying on a private jet going on a super yacht staying at a luxury resort. If he disclosed all of it. This would be completely within the, within the guidelines of the rules and laws governing Supreme Court justices. And that's a really stark contrast to the other branches of government. You know, if you look at members of Congress for instance, they're generally prohibited from accepting a gift from anyone that's worth more than $50. There are some exceptions, but to take a trip like this, even from a, you know, a close personal friend. They need to get formal pre approval from an ethics committee. Well, in fact this came up in your reporting didn't it we have published in the story for those who have seen it on a photo realist painting of Clarence Thomas at Harlem Crows. You know, Adirondack's resort, and it's a it's a really quite, quite realistic painting of five people sitting around one of those people is a former Thomas law clerk named Mark Poloni, I believe that is right. I'll let it. I'm sorry, Mark Paletta, and Mr Paletta you interviewed him about all this and what did he do when he was offered. He was the time working in the White House right. What did he do when he was offered the chance to do to visit this for free. There was a female exchange with with Mr Paletta actually about his he was also on the Indonesia trip. He was there with Justice Thomas, and we and he, you know we we got his financial disclosure, because he was at the time, a lawyer in the Trump administration, and he had disclosed it so he went to him and asked him why. And he told us that you know when he when when crow invited him on this trip, he went to his agency's ethics council. And they told him that, you know, he would need to reimburse Mr crow for this and so he did. So that's pretty clear that's an executive branch official he can accept a gift from somebody who might have, you know, business before the federal government has to pay for it himself. Is there any real purpose I mean I think you know one of the things we try to think hard about a pro public is why do people do the things they do it helps us. I think right. sympathetically and effectively about them. Is there a good reason why Supreme Court would have a different set of rules and that you could you've come across in your report and why why is it this way. That's an excellent question. I mean, I think part of it might have to do with the level of scrutiny the court has had over the years, because frankly, you know, these, these, these harsher restrictions that the other branches of government have didn't come out of nowhere they didn't just decide like, Okay, the law requires us to do this but we're going to go above and beyond and you know members of Congress aren't going to take gifts that are worth more than 50 bucks. So the really the strict laws in Congress, for instance, came followed the Jack Abramoff scandal, which is people may remember involved lobbyists that was giving all sorts of perks to to members of Congress and you know after that happened, they really, they really impose stricter rules. And so I think it may simply be that. I can't speculate to why the court hasn't taken, taken this upon themselves, but they haven't had the level of scrutiny or the level of scandal of some other branches and so maybe had, you know, less reason to feel they needed to tighten down. Well certainly up until recent years of Supreme Court I think has consistently been of the three branches the polling the most respected the most popular Congress for many years now being very low in the ratings and the White House, pretty low in the court until I think the last two or years, always by far the most respected. Several folks asked questions of us, Josh, which I guess we should both respond to. Are we aware of the Wall Street Journal editorial and what do we say to this argument that it's all a big smear. I'll certainly let you answer that I might have a thought to myself. We thought these are really important facts to get before the public and that they would help inform the public conversation about the Supreme Court and what we should expect of justice is conduct and I think it has sparked that conversation I mean to the, you know, notion that it's a, it's a politically motivated I mean, I don't, I would like to emphasize that, you know, for me and Justin and Alex that was, we didn't go out looking for what we could find on justice Thomas we went out looking for, you know, started researching Supreme Court justices and we found that a lot of these gifts for Thomas and so we went in that direction and we're still very much interested in the topic. And we're going to keep reporting. I should say that if anyone on this call happens to have any information we should know about any justice, we would be extremely extremely eager to hear from you. Perhaps our colleague Connor can put in the chat way away to reach us with that kind of information. And I would just add as editor when I heard and was interested in the subject of going, you know, covering the judiciary more closely. One of the initial thoughts I had turned to not only the 2011 New York Times story on Thomas but also more recent work by the Wall Street Journal very fine work on the federal district judges who theoretically have a tighter regiment and we're deciding a lot of cases in which they had some personal financial interests and so that certainly made me want to know more about the judiciary and when the team came to us and had this focus on the Supreme Court it seemed to me to make a good sense. Number one is the highest court in the land and number two, from a journalistic perspective it seemed to have been a little bit less examined of late and so that's what motivated us this was not. You know people, you know I've seen the tweets and so on about. I mean, actually some interesting tweets on both sides on on on the on the right. There are people who said well this is clearly aimed at Thomas who's a leader of originalism and ProPublica is trying to take that down which which clearly has nothing to do with anything in our coverage. And then some other people frankly saying on the left well would ProPublica cover this if the names were George Soros and Elena Cagan and let me assure you we will. I would love to write that story. Yes, if anyone of this call knows anything about anybody, you know, on any side of the Supreme Court that has been in arrangements like this this is we think worthy of putting before the public in in a very factual way and that's what we tried to the tone of the story was to try to be as as factual as possible. I'm using question here Josh, and you have already in your in your relatively young career done a lot of really fascinating things Josh worked on a quite amazing story on our departure from Afghanistan interviewing soldiers who survived the blasts and one of the last days of the war and cobbles so you already had your share of big stories but one of the people on this call asked, Josh what was it like for you as a journalist or person working on this story when did it get excited. When did you know you were on to a big scoop to make a stir. Oh, this is good. Did your editors make you double check certain facts. Oh, they didn't have to we we we quadruple checked all the facts in our story. But yes, I mean it was. It was a really satisfying a reporting process because we kind of had this continual stream of new stuff coming in and things we had to ultimately leave on the cutting room floor I mean it was, you know, you know, early on we were doing a lot at Camp Topbridge and learning how often, you know, Thomas had been going there and what it was like and what happened while he was there. And then suddenly, you know we start hearing about the yacht and start digging in on that side. So, I don't think there was like any one moment. And it was, you know, even when in retrospect things that seem, you know, were 2000 words down in our story felt remarkable when we found them, and then it kept kind of ballooning. Isn't that really typical of the process of any good investigative story right you don't mean one of the things that happens is you don't really know where you're going. I mean, when you guys started this we had no notion of what we would find. And that's kind of why this is one of the greatest careers you could ever have. Yeah, no it's there's nothing more fun than talking to people who know a lot more than you do and trying to get washed away whatever the facts end up going. A lot of people have asked about and we did have a line in the story about this. You know, this was seemingly without precedent and we're always, I will share with our audience we're always very nervous and that kind of writing in the world of journalism because, you know, I'm a former New York Times for employee basically reporter and editor the word unique is essentially banned at the New York Times because the minute you say something is unique, somebody calls you up and says no it's not. But we did feel that we could say as far as we could tell this was without precedent. I mean has any other Supreme Court justice in history other than Thomas been caught up in anything that looks like this. Yeah, I mean there are a number of scandals. You know, I mean and we, you know, we felt that you know we decided to say is that the extent and frequency of these gifts going from crow to Thomas was unprecedented in the courts modern history. I mean, I mean, I think probably the most most noteworthy one in the last, you know, 60 odd years is a fortice, who was a Supreme Court justice, who in the late 60s I believe it may have been the early 70s. Ultimately had to resign, because he was receiving a he received a $20,000 retainer from an organization tied to a friend of his. And the retainer was was set up such that it was going to give him an annual payment every year for the rest of his life. And he ultimately this friend of his got caught up in insider trading scandal. Thomas ultimately returned the money and when that case, we made its way up to the court he recused himself from the case, but the outcry from lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike with such that he ultimately felt the end of his eye. Right now one interesting thing about that and I can assure our listeners this is not the case in Pro Public has worked we don't talk about our sources but I do want to we've been clear about this from the beginning. I mean, in that particular case by then Republican President, President Nixon was in office, and the Nixon administration was aware of this scandal, involving the $20,000 payment which had not been public knowledge and they were closely with a magazine to help make sure that this became publicly known. And so you certainly could make an argument. Now that we have all the Nixon tapes and some of the records from that period, the Nixon administration was trying to force out a democratically appointed Fordis and Fordis was a close close friend of LBJ's, they were trying to force him out and potentially change the composition of the court. You know, again, is not typical that we would comment on, you know, on sources and methods of how we do things. But I just want to assure people on this call this is nothing like that this is not the origins of this story at all and I think it's important that people know that. This is, this is the result of, as you're hearing, the what we would call the investigative method, having somewhat unlimited time not entirely unlimited but somewhat unlimited time and in space to really dig into things and try to learn things that that maybe nobody knew. Let's talk a little bit briefly in the time we have left Josh one of the questions that certainly came up for us and I know it's come up for the public. How confident can we be that this relationship is, as it's been described on crow says that Thomas is our dear friends and vice versa. And that he has nothing before the court of any interest me. How do we know that. Can we be certain of that. This is a lot unknown about the relationship. Still, I mean crow, you know, we talked to people who know both men and they told us they have become genuine friends. But, you know, they've spent a lot of time together over the years in private or relatively private places all over the world and basically, we know very, very little about what they've discussed or whether, you know, crow has had some influence on Thomas's views whether directly or indirectly. You know, Crow told us they've never discussed a pending case. And he's never sought to influence justice Thomas. But I mean I think this, you know, you know, you talk to political scientists they'll tell you about, you know, how the people you associate with and spend time with have you know inevitably have an influence on your views. And I think this broader question of how this relationship or if this relationship that spans decades has impacted Thomas is very much still alive one. What about and we don't really know much about this. What about other people that he could have interacted with unbeknownst even to Harlan Crow. I mean, as I understand it that private plane had more than two or three seats on it right how many people were on a trip like that and what kind of people were they. I mean, so, I mean, crow not only has this access to justice Thomas but that access extends to kind of anyone else he chooses to invite along in these trips and so I mean top bridge is kind of the easiest example to look at it's this this resort that is guest don't pay the commission only Crow owns it and you know we've, you know, Thomas has been up there with Leonard Leo, the leader of the Federalist Society, who a lot of people kind of regard as a principal architect of the Supreme Court's turned to the right in recent years. So in one trip in 2017, we learned Thomas's other guests that we concluded, you know, executives at, you know, Verizon and Price Waterhouse Coopers which is the accounting giant major Republican donors, one of the leaders of the American Enterprise Institute influential So we certainly don't have a full picture of who all is doing these trips over the years but and we have no, you have no evidence that anything untoward happened with those trip with with these other people, you know, Crow told us that, you know, to his knowledge no one's tried to lobby or influence Thomas they wouldn't any invite anyone who he thought might. But I think it's a really interesting question of you know who, you know, who, who is in this milieu and what is the impact of that on Thomas Ben. In a sense, unless until and unless, which I don't expect would happen that Thomas were to the court where disclose more details about who was on these trips and so on. It's going to be pretty hard to know whether somebody was in proximity to the justice. Yes, had a case. I found out that there are many, many, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of court cases file over the country and I think the Supreme Court grants cert and what about 200 so it's, it's a small, a small number to be sure. But it's not nothing, and it's incredibly influential. All right, I think we have time for a couple more questions. I think one question that somebody wanted to ask was, Jimmy Thomas of course has been much in the news with the revelations post January 6 about her role in contesting and protesting and sending even emails to state legislators about the election outcomes. Jimmy Thomas typically go with Clarence Thomas on these trips as you go by himself or what do we know about that. For most of the ones that we, I mean I guess we don't have a full picture but yes she often or is on these trips with Justice Thomas. She's in Indonesia she's been at top bridge with him. There's a kind of a long history of Thomas and his wife and Harlan Crow and his wife, all traveling together to places around the world. Which you know is not surprising I mean I'm not surprised at all. Clearly, the Justice's calendar is such that they do work very hard for a period of the year and then there's a period of the year where things are a little quieter so I can understand why his wife would take these trips. So we're going to thank everybody for all their questions this has really been, they've been flooding in here, and I've been trying to deal with them as quickly as we can and as broadly as we can I did want to sort of close with a little question just you know you're new to this but it is a question I think that everybody has as wondered about we saw the Democrats in the Senate Dick Durbin in particular putting on a statement saying that that they expected that they would legislate about this that there may be coming from the Congress of Supreme Court code of ethics that might have some enforcement mechanisms I don't know what ethics officer maybe. What do you think is that possible, you think that's going to happen or is that is that really kind of a dream here. I mean, there's, you know, there's been some talk there've been bills floated about this for for a while now. And this certainly is the most momentum and concerted action I've seen toward imposing new rules on the court in a long time. You have people like Dick Durbin, you know, vowing to act and calling this reporting a call to action. So far, nothing has has there's been no real concrete steps in that direction. You know they've also demanded the justice Roberts investigate lawmakers have, whether or not that, you know, whether or not he intends to do so is is still unclear. I mean, you know, there've been there've been there've been, you know, various kind of controversies around the court for a long time now and there haven't been major ethical reforms since the late 70s. But I think it remains to be seen. I mean, I'll maybe close out here and just say that, you know, somebody who started off very early in his career covering the Supreme Court for the Dallas Morning News and being a sort of great fan of it. I am, I am skeptical that they will accept this but I think one of the things we all know about journalists is that they're really terrible predictors of the future. So, I'm not going to contradict you, Josh, because, you know, things can change. And we all of the stuff we cover is testament to that so I'd like to thank you for your time. And while you're still working on this interesting and exciting story and thank our audience for joining us.