Harlan Crow speaks following investigation

Harlan Crow, who rarely speaks with the media, sat down for an interview Sunday, following revelations into his gifts and financial ties to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. 

Less than two weeks after ProPublica broke the news that Thomas accepted countless luxury vacations and other gifts from Crow, the real estate mogul said he and Thomas are victims of a “political hit job,” in an interview with the Dallas Morning News.

Crow, the former CEO of Crow Holdings and son of real estate icon Trammell Crow, touched on the ProPublica investigation as well as his collection of Nazi artifacts during the interview at his home in Highland Park. 

The scandal heated up last week when ProPublica revealed that Crow bought Thomas’ mother’s house in 2014 for $133,363 and performed renovations, transactions that Thomas didn’t disclose. ProPublica’s reporting alleged that Thomas violated a law requiring justices to report gifts of $415 or more.

“I think that the media, and this ProPublica group in particular, funded by leftists, has an agenda to destabilize the [Supreme] Court,” Crow told the outlet. “What they’ve done is not truthful. It lacks integrity. They’ve done a pretty good job in the last week or two of unfairly slamming me and more importantly than that, unfairly slamming Justice Thomas.”

Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of ProPublica, responded, noting that ProPublica is an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit news organization funded by 36,000 donors.

“As investigative journalists, our job is to unearth the facts. If Harlan Crow disputes the accuracy of our reporting involving Justice Clarence Thomas, we invite him to provide us with the details so we can correct any inaccuracies,” he said.

“It’s worth noting that he and Justice Thomas were given detailed, written questions in advance of our stories. Thomas declined to respond. Crow’s answers were included in full. He questioned none of the facts we reported.”

Crow refuted the claim that Thomas has acted unethically, referring to him as one of the most honorable men he knows, with “incredibly high personal and moral standards.” He also said that commenting on what a judge can or cannot do is “not my world” and not something he knows about. 

When asked about purchasing Thomas’ mother’s house in Georgia, Crow said he assumed Thomas’ mother owned it, and he bought it with plans of one day turning it into a museum honoring the Justice, citing his “amazing American life story: born into deep poverty.” Crow admitted to building a carport at the house but no other major renovations.

Regarding the Nazi and communist artifacts he owns, Crow referenced his passion for American history and all things related. He said these artifacts help to tell the broad story of America and World War II.

“We have a small number of things here that are about bad guys,” he told the outlet. “We have a lot on slavery. Slavery was a great evil in American history. There’s a lot more about Frederick Douglass here than there is about the bad guys of slavery. You can’t have a library and talk about that without including the bad.”

Crow also spoke about his revival of Trammell Crow Company when he was with the company in the 1990s. He made strategic moves to turn his father’s namesake company back into a major real estate player after its value had almost completely deteriorated. Crow said he donated millions of dollars to the Republican party in the past five years, but he doesn’t understand his supposed status as a “megadonor.” 

In addition, he discussed his love for the Founding Fathers, a handwritten letter he owns by Abraham Lincoln and his desire to be a “regular person.”

—Quinn Donoghue