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Experts. joining me now is jeremy fogel, executive director of the berkeley judicial institute at the university of california berkeley and a former u.s. district judge for the northern district of california. judge fogle, great to have you with us. thank you for your time. as a former federal judge, would you have been able to keep your job if you engaged in conduct like clarence thomas? >> well, let me say this -- there are two different regulatory schemes here, one of them is the ethics and government act, which is the one that requires the reporting, and the other is the code of conduct fo...

That is pretty unusual arrangement. but on top of that, a problem just granting the association that, the association has been fundraising off of that event itself and a charging donors anywhere between 1504 members, 7500 for individual nonmembers. all the way up to i think it is about $100,000 for a table at that event. so this is a very unique situation. and according to the ethics experts, it violates one of the key -- of the whole judiciary. which says you are not allowed, you shouldn't be fundraising off of your position. now, the justices are not named specifically in those cannons, but ...

Get this right. -- supreme court by this nonprofit, horror shiro -- algerian association, horacio, part of, meghan say that five times. now, justice thomas is a member of that association. the group was charging 250,000 per table. help me understand this, brett. how exactly is that allowed? >> yeah, so this was something that the ethics experts we went to were really surprised by and a little incensed about. so the arrangement here is that the group founders was on the whole event, the event takes place over an entire day in multiple different spots around d.c.. really since his induction in 1...

Easily understood rules about what is and what is not right in financial matters. and this report will likely make that drumbeat much louder. >> tom foreman reporting for us. thank you. >> joining us now, one of the propublica reporters behind the investigation. and we'll get into how you reported this out in a moment because it is fascinating. but to tom's last point there about what was illegal if anything, one of the lines in here, you write thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets. so did clarence thomas break the la...

These trips, you know, as you mentioned, you know, dozens of private jet flights provided by billionaire businessmen, vacations around the world to places like indonesia, the bahamas, jackson hole, wyoming, and the fact that he hasn't been disclosing these gifts is really in contrast to other judges including his colleagues. i mean, the late justice ruth bader ginsburg as far as we know took one of these trips a single time. but the reason we know about it is she disclosed it, which everyone we talked to said is what she was supposed to do in accordance with the law. this disclosure statute, w...