What ProPublica’s Latest Hit Piece Gets Wrong

ProPublica is at it again. On Aug. 10 the website, which styles itself “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force,” published its latest hit piece against my friend Justice Clarence Thomas. The article focuses on three friends of Justice Thomas—Tony Novelly, David Sokol and Wayne Huizenga—and gets significant facts wrong.

The story makes much of Mr. Novelly’s 126-foot yacht, the Le Montrachet, which he takes on fishing expeditions in the Bahamas. ProPublica claims to have found that Justice Thomas took “a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas.” Justice Thomas tells me he has never seen this yacht and hasn’t been to the Bahamas since the 1980s, before he joined the high court. A senior official with the Novelly organization confirmed that its records show Justice Thomas was never a passenger on any yacht owned by Mr. Novelly.

Mr. Novelly co-owned a different yacht, the Daybreak, with Mr. Sokol. That boat was docked at Mr. Sokol’s home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when Justice Thomas visited in 2018. Mr. Sokol and Justice Thomas have both confirmed that Justice Thomas walked onto the boat, got a tour of the engine room, and left within 30 minutes. Mr. Novelly wasn’t there, and the boat never left the dock. That’s the only time he has set foot on a boat owned by Mr. Novelly.

As for Mr. Huizenga, ProPublica reports that in the early 2000s he “gave Thomas something that was priceless at the time: a standing invitation to his exclusive, members-only golf club”—but leaves out that Justice Thomas, who doesn’t play golf, declined the invitation. His only connection to the club is that he visited once a year, no more than five times in total, to have lunch with Mr. Huizenga when he traveled to Florida to visit Ginni Thomas’s parents, who lived in the Sunshine State. Justice Thomas’s in-laws came along for the lunches.

ProPublica also finds a scandal in Justice Thomas’s attending a University of Nebraska football game with Mr. Sokol and sitting in a suite hosted by former Nebraska coach and athletic director Tom Osborne. The reporters cite a “typical” suite’s annual price tag, $40,000, and quote an “ethics expert” saying that Justice Thomas should have reported this ticket as a gift. But the price of a ticket has nothing to do with the price of a suite.

The ticket price for Justice Thomas’s seats at this game was $65, based on information provided by the Nebraska Athletic Department. That is well below the $415 threshold for a reportable gift. (Disclosure: I attended this Nebraska game, was in the suite with Justice Thomas and friends, and I was made aware of the price of the ticket at the time. The ProPublica piece also mentions me in connection with another trip involving Mr. Sokol.)

ProPublica has a record of similar mistakes and omissions. I noted in June that an earlier story had failed to mention that the Judicial Conference cleared Justice Thomas in 2011 on allegations that he had improperly failed to disclose travel with his friend Harlan Crow and issued a letter saying he had not omitted any information from his forms. The site has yet to update its earlier story to acknowledge that point.

ProPublica limits its investigations to conservative justices—ignoring, for instance, that Justice Stephen Breyer took at least 17 trips, eight of them international, funded by the Democratic Pritzker Family organization. Its reporters have every right to investigate whatever they want, but they also have a duty to get their facts straight.

Mr. Paoletta served as general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget, 2018-21. A Washington lawyer, he represented Ginni Thomas in the Jan. 6 Select Committee investigation.