literally tilting at windmills. it comes as his legal team decides its best defense in his civil rape trial. no defense at all? another deadly mass shooting in america. the latest, a medical center in atlanta, prompting an impassioned plea from georgia senator raphael warnock. also, new reporting on the deep financial ties between supreme court justice clarence thomas and a texas billionaire. keep getting deeper. it keeps getting worse. on capitol hill, there is no off-ramp when it comes to a deal on the debt ceiling. we ll have the latest on the contentious negotiations. meanwhile, the markets mostly flat this morning in response to the latest interest rate hike from the federal reserve. we ll have a full breakdown of what could be the final move from the central bank in the fight to bring down inflation. good morning, everyone, and welcome to morning joe. it is thursday, may 4th. we got two out of three birthdays under our belt here. exactly. willie
lot of americans, unfortunately. steve rattner, thank you very much. we appreciate you coming on with the charts this morning. kids loved it. they adored it. now, pro republica out with new reporting on supreme court justice clarence thomas. the organization has been leading the investigative reporting into justice thomas having received luxury trips, real estate deals and gifts from billionaire harlan crow over a 20-year period. their newest report is regarding tuition payments for the grand nephew of justice thomas, who he was raising as his son. joining us now, one publica reporters on the story, justin elliott. thank you for joining us. this reporting is staggering. how much money are we talking about as it pertains to this tuition that the republican donor was providing for the supreme court justice? yeah, so we don t have the full amount, but we re talking
level of undisclosed gifts, you d want to get them out of the government. justin, obviously, justice thomas has not reported his tuition payments or anything else in his disclosure forms. you mentioned the bush white house lawyers, which rebuts claims this is a partisan effort here. has justice thomas offered any explanation at all as to why he thought this was proper behavior? justice thomas did not respond if our questions for the latest story. he released one statement in response to our first story about the travel harlan crow has been providing him with, in which he said, look, i m close friends with harlan crow. i was advised by my colleagues that i didn t have to disclose this. they have not said, you know, what or who that was. the law is clear, you have to disclose gifts like this.
entire supreme court, and i m contractually obliged to say that if anyone has information about other justices, they should get in touch. you know, seriously, we haven t we just haven t found anything like this relationship between crow and thomas with any of the other justices at this point. we re talking about a billionaire political donor who is funding, you know, multiple aspects of the life of a justice. this private school tuition, which we the story we broke today. lavish vacations on his yacht. private yet use for 20 years. harlan owns the house where thomas mother is apparently living rent free. we spoke to the chief ethics lawyer for the george w. bush white house, richard painter, who said that, you know, basically never seen anything like this. when he was in the government, if you had a staffer taking this