Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently warned that the Supreme Court could, “at some point,” become “compromised.” What he didn’t say was that the call was coming from inside the house.
Thomas was railing against court expansion, but he himself, in tandem with his wife, the professional right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, is compromising the Supreme Court every day he serves. Ginni Thomas exchanged dozens of text messages with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the wake of the 2020 elections, pushing Team Trump to try to overturn the election results. She then attended the January 6 rally before the attack on the U.S. Capitol. When Donald Trump’s efforts to block the select committee from getting documents relating to January 6 reached the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas not only didn’t recuse himself, he was the lone dissent to an order to turn them over.
The revelations about Ginni Thomas’ texts have Democrats calling on Thomas to recuse himself from “any case related to the January 6th investigation, and should Donald Trump run again, any case related to the 2024 election.” But Thomas has never recused himself from a case because of his wife, despite her intense involvement in the kind of right-wing groups that are often involved in Supreme Court cases. There’s no reason to believe Clarence Thomas will start recusing himself now—and he’ll have support in his refusal.
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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Friday that he didn’t think Thomas should recuse himself. “I think Justice Thomas should make his decision like he's made every other time. It's his decision based upon law,” McCarthy said, demonstrating again that what Republicans care about is partisan power, not any kind of ethics or integrity.
For what it’s worth, it’s true that it is Thomas’ decision, because Supreme Court justices answer to no one on their ethics or lack thereof—something that should change. But that decision has been corrupt plenty of times before now, and it will be if and when Thomas joins in on the next January 6-related case.
By contrast, Republicans demanded to know if Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would recuse herself from the Harvard University admissions case because she sits on Harvard’s Board of Overseers. Even though her term on that board will be up before she would be hearing the case and she did not participate in setting the policy in question. But Jackson said she will recuse herself, in keeping with a career in which legal ethics experts say she has tended to err on the side of caution.
Clarence Thomas pretends to be concerned about the institution of the Supreme Court. But, like everything else Thomas does, that claim is simply intended to position him to continue ruling on the exact same right-wing issues his wife and “best friend” is dedicating her life to promoting.
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