Democrats must take action against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for flouting judicial ethics as his wife pushes extremist Republican politics.
"In a sane world, Jane Mayer’s excellent piece on Ginni Thomas in The New Yorker would set off a series of events that would lead to her husband Clarence Thomas’s impeachment and removal from the Supreme Court. Ginni is involved with numerous far-right organizations and schemes that take very public positions on Court decisions across a range of social and political issues, such as last week’s 8-1 holding that Donald Trump could not block the release of documents related to the January 6 insurrection," New Republic editor Michael Tomasky wrote. "Thomas was the lone dissenter in that case. His wife sat on the advisory board of a group that sent busloads of insurrectionists to Washington that day. In addition to that, she cheered the insurrection on Facebook."
Tomasky argued that the corruption had been going on for decades.
"They’ve been doing this for years. This first came up back in 2000, in a case Mayer doesn’t even go into, when it was revealed after that election that as a Heritage Foundation staffer, Ginni was screening resumes for the incoming Bush administration while the nation awaited a ruling from the Court on the Florida recount. There was pressure then on Thomas to recuse himself," he wrote.
While the Supreme Court was deciding Obamacare, Ginni Thomas' group Liberty Central was urging the law to be repealed and Clarence Thomas was urged to recuse himself.
"He didn’t do so in either case. And in the first one, he was part of the 5-4 majority in Bush v. Gore, one of the most self-discrediting decisions in the Court’s history," he explained. "So for 20 years, Ginni Thomas has been operating in the white-hot center of far-right activist circles, involved in everything from Obamacare to abortion rights to same-sex marriage to you name it—all issues that have come before her husband. A more honorable man would recuse himself from all such cases, or indeed quietly ask his spouse to find another, less incendiary line of work that has no impact on the appearance of her husband’s ethical standards."
Thomasky wrote that if there were a liberal justice acting in a similar manner, Republicans in Congress would raise the issue and Fox News would turn it "into a symbol of liberal corruption." He suggested the GOP would hold hearings and ultimately impeach the justice.
He urged Democrats to pursue the issue.
"The House Judiciary Committee could hold hearings into Ginni’s organization and associations. The select committee on January 6 could ask her to testify and, once she refuses, subpoena her, which would require her husband to recuse himself on all January 6–related matters," he explained. "That would be hugely controversial, so they probably won’t do it. But why not? Here’s a question for you. If the Republicans retake the House this November, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee is going to be Jim Jordan. He’s probably going to lead an impeachment of Joe Biden. Think he’ll be cowed because it’s hugely controversial?"
Tomasky concluded that for Democrats, "it’s long past time to make an issue of [Clarence Thomas] and his wife."
Read the full column.
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