Democrats rip Justice Clarence Thomas over his wife’s ‘deranged’ push to overturn election
Justice Clarence Thomas stepped out of the hospital on Friday and into a political maelstrom.
Thomas, a three-decade conservative veteran on the Supreme Court, was diagnosed with an infection and hospitalized for a week. But his greatest headache could stem from another source: the public disclosure that his wife pushed the Trump White House in 2020 to fight hard to overturn President Biden’s election victory.
Ginni Thomas has said she briefly attended former President Donald Trump’s fateful, falsehood-filled Jan. 6 rally, but did not participate in the violent attack on the Capitol that followed. Her Jan. 6 revelation made waves when it came to light this month, raising questions about her husband’s decision not to recuse himself from cases related to the election.
But those questions reached new decibels after The Washington Post reported Thursday that Ginni Thomas sent text messages in 2020 to Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, pressing him to help Trump overturn the election and accusing Democrats of “attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” she implored, according to The Post.
Her torrent of texts — 21 in total, according to The Post — met commitments from Meadows that he would carry on the fight, and underscored her close ties to the Trump White House. A lawyer and conservative activist, she has claimed that she and her husband bifurcate their careers.
But Rep. Mondaire Jones, a New York Democrat, responded to the texts by tweeting that “Justice Thomas’ association with a clearly deranged Ginni Thomas calls his own judgment into question. It is terrifying that he serves on the Supreme Court.”
Justice Thomas is perhaps the Supreme Court’s most conservative member. And in January, he dissented from an otherwise unanimous Supreme Court decision that rejected a bid by Trump to halt the release of White House documents related to Jan. 6.
The court’s ruling opened a stream of records sought by the House select committee probing the Capitol assault. The House panel had already received some 2,000 text messages from Meadows, including the messages he is said to have traded with Ginni Thomas.
Federal judges are instructed to recuse themselves from cases in which their impartiality might be questioned. But Supreme Court justices — clothed in immense constitutional power — can make their own calls about disqualifying themselves from cases.
“There are only nine justices, and if a justice recuses him or herself, there’s not somebody else to step in,” said Bruce Green, a Fordham Law School professor and expert on judicial ethics. “In general, the justices don’t want to take themselves off cases.”
Thomas has received criticism for years over his wife’s work, and he has sometimes ignored calls from Democrats to skip cases. But the Jan. 6 case struck many observers as an extreme breach of judicial ethics.
“Justice Thomas’ conduct on the Supreme Court looks increasingly corrupt,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement on Friday. “Justice Thomas needs 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.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) echoed Wyden’s demand, adding on Twitter that the “nation deserves an explanation” and that the “Supreme Court needs a Code of Ethics.”
It was not clear if Thomas knew about his wife’s messages to Meadows when he dissented in January. And it was unclear how the justice might handle future cases concerning the 2020 election, which Biden won by 74 votes in the electoral college and by more than 7 million votes in the popular vote.
The Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for Thomas’ comment on Democrats’ recusal demands.
Green described the unearthed texts as “embarrassing” for the justice, but said he did not think Thomas would necessarily have a duty to disqualify himself from ruling on future cases involving the 2020 or 2024 elections.
“If there are cases where his wife has a pretty tangible interest — which I think she did with respect to whether her texts get turned over to the House committee — then I think he should recuse himself,” Green said. “Otherwise, I don’t know that he has an obligation.”
