GOP megadonor Harlan Crow says he doesn't understand the Supreme Court enough to talk law with Clarence Thomas. He says they chat about Motown.

Harlan Crow told The Atlantic that he and Clarence Thomas mostly talk about their shared interests, and only tangentially talk about work.

• Harlan Crow spoke to The Atlantic about his controversial relationship with Clarence Thomas.
• The GOP megadonor said he knows too little about the law to discuss Supreme Court cases with Thomas.
• He told The Atlantic he isn't a "law guy" and instead chats with Thomas about Motown and sports.

Harlan Crow, a GOP megadonor, is under public scrutiny owing to a series of ProPublica reports on his controversial financial relationship with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

But in an interview with The Atlantic, Crow brushed off any accusations of corruption or impropriety with an unusual defense — his ignorance.

Crow claimed in the interview that he would never have discussed Supreme Court cases with Thomas because he lacks the legal knowledge to do so, telling the magazine's writer Graeme Wood that he isn't a "law guy" and knows very little about constitutional law.

He said that it would be "absurd" for him to discuss individual Supreme Court cases with Thomas because "that's not my world," per The Atlantic, adding that he could name only about "five or six" major Supreme Court cases. He started giving examples, but stopped after two.

Crow has been caught up in scandal since ProPublica released a series of reports that revealed the he had been bankrolling some elements of Thomas' life; paying tuition for his grandnephew's boarding school, taking him and his wife on lavish vacations, and even buying Thomas' childhood home without the justice disclosing it.

Crow, who made his fortune in real estate, had earlier dismissed accusations that there was "some kind of reciprocity" and insisted that he and Thomas are just good friends.

Being friends means that "work-related issues" do occasionally come up in conversation, Crow told The Atlantic.

"It's not realistic [for] two people [to] be friends and not talk about their jobs from time to time," he said in his interview with the magazine.

Those conversations were casual and not about jurisprudence, he said, with Crow describing the discussion of specific Supreme Court cases as "off limits."

He insisted in the interview that Thomas' discussions of work largely revolved around things like his fondness for his colleagues. Instead of the law, he told The Atlantic that they more often discuss their shared love of Motown, as well as the weather and sports.

"We talk about life," Crow told the magazine. "We're two guys who are the same age and grew up in the same era. We share a love of Motown."

Crow did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.