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“Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent weeks of text messages imploring White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to act to overturn the 2020 presidential election… The 29 messages the pair exchanged came in the weeks after the vote in November 2020.” AP News
On Monday, “Two dozen Democratic lawmakers demanded that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ‘promptly recuse himself’ from future cases related to pro-Trump efforts to challenge the 2020 election results, including those tied to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.” CNBC
The right defends Justice Thomas, arguing that other judges in similar situations have not recused themselves.
“Supreme Court justices are not even subject to disqualification over their own activities that bear directly on cases. This never upsets Democrats when the justices have been appointed by Democratic presidents. Consequently, Justice Elena Kagan did not recuse herself from the Obamacare case, providing the critical vote to uphold it despite having served as President Obama’s solicitor general when the administration was formulating the legal strategy to defend the Affordable Care Act…
“Justice Stephen Breyer has been aptly described as the primary architect of the federal sentencing guidelines. He steered them through Congress in 1984 as the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chief counsel before serving, as a federal appeals court judge, on the Sentencing Commission that created the guidelines. Yet, after being appointed to the high court by President Clinton, Breyer declined to recuse himself when the Supreme Court weighed the constitutionality of the guidelines.”
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review
“Judge Cornelia Pillard of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is married to David Cole, national legal director of the ACLU. The husband of Alice Batchelder, a judge on the Sixth Circuit, served as speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives. Marjorie Rendell was an appellate judge when her husband, Ed, served as governor of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. When these judges had to recuse themselves from a case due to a conflict of interest, they were trusted to do so…
“Justice Thomas’s critics don’t want to hold him to a higher standard so much as a different standard. Major cases involving abortion, gun control, affirmative action and religious liberty are on the high court’s docket this year. The left’s goal is to diminish his influence—and by extension the influence of the court’s conservative wing. And since the target is Justice Thomas, who has been driving his ideological opponents batty for the past 30 years, the thinking is that anything goes.”
Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal
“A Justice should recuse if he has some financial or significant personal interest in one of the parties to a case. Or if the Justice, a spouse or family member is a party to the litigation. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson recently said she would recuse from the case challenging Harvard’s admissions standards because she is a member of Harvard’s board of overseers. This is an appropriate reason for recusal…
“But Ginni Thomas’s personal views on the election do not make her a party to any case likely to come before the Court. In her text messages in 2020 and 2021 to then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, she was expressing her personal political views that the 2020 election had been stolen. Very few cases that come before the Court aren’t political in some sense. If a spouse’s political views are grounds for recusal—say, on abortion—the Court might never have a full complement of nine.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
The left criticizes Justice Thomas, arguing that he should recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election.
The left criticizes Justice Thomas, arguing that he should recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election.
“Let’s be clear: Ginni Thomas’s texts themselves aren’t the issue. Yes, her argument that ‘Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History’ is deluded. Biden won the 2020 election. But she has a right to her views, same as anyone else. The problem lies in a late November message to Meadows in which Thomas refers to a reassuring conversation with her ‘best friend.’ It’s hard not to read that as a reference to her husband…
“This isn’t the first time ethical boundaries have been questioned when it comes to the Thomases. As the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reported in January, Ginni Thomas received $200,000 in 2017 and 2018 from a group asking the high court to uphold Trump’s ‘Muslim travel ban,’ which Justice Thomas voted to do in June 2018. In 2011, the justice amended his financial declarations after previously failing to disclose $680,000 his wife was paid by the Heritage Foundation… Only a thorough investigation and complete overhaul of ethics rules for Supreme Court justices would reverse this dispiriting trend.”
James Downie, Washington Post
"This wasn’t just a matter of Thomas’s wife being an activist for causes that came up before the Supreme Court; this was Thomas possibly voting in a way that could shield his wife’s activities. We learned last week that Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas had strategized with the White House about overturning the election, and Thomas was the only justice to vote to withhold White House records involved in that effort from the Jan. 6 committee…
“That means it’s possible the communications Justice Thomas voted to withhold could involve his wife. It’s possible her communications were wrapped up in those records — though the texts we’ve seen to date were sent to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’s personal phone — and it’s also possible the communications might merely mention her actions.”
Aaron Blake, Washington Post
"Imagine if, as the court were hearing cases involving abortion restrictions, the husband of Justice Amy Coney Barrett were actively sharing messages with activists on either side of the issue or their attorneys? Or, were she to be confirmed as a justice, Jackson's husband were to send dozens of messages to the White House Chief of Staff with talking points on critical race theory -- an issue that Republicans made central at her confirmation hearing? People would be right to lose their minds…
“We have placed too much trust in the individuals on the court to police themselves. Congress should immediately pass tougher ethical guidelines for justices. Chief Justice John Roberts, who repeatedly stresses how much he cares about the public perception of the court, could speak out more forcefully about his colleagues' -- or their spouses' -- behavior. And even if we are to believe that he and his wife don't discuss work at home, Justice Thomas should stop hearing January 6 cases. Without those steps, neither he, the Chief Justice, nor anyone else should be shocked that America has lost faith in its highest court."
Elliot Williams, CNN
