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Legal experts think Ginni Thomas 'crossed a line' by taking an 'active part' to overturn election: reporter
May 23, 2022 8:57AM ET
Ginni Thomas (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
On CNN Monday, Washington Post reporter Emma Brown walked through the legal implications of far-right activist Ginni Thomas, husband of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, reaching out to Arizona lawmakers to try to get them to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
"What these emails show is that she wasn't just, you know, saying what she thought publicly, but she was part of a strategy, you know, she was taking an active role in this strategy to pressure state legislatures in the key swing states to basically disregard the popular vote, set that aside, and choose their own electors, choose Trump electors to help him stay in office," said Brown.
"So how did these lawmakers respond, Emma, to what she was imploring?" asked anchor Brianna Keilar.
"One of them is the Speaker of the Arizona House, the other is the wife of a Supreme Court justice in the state of Arizona who is friendly with the Thomases," said Brown. "They both said they responded to her emails the way they responded to the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of other emails they got during this period. They also took very different tacks, though. The Speaker of the House, Rusty Bowers, he said, look, what Ginni Thomas was asking me to do at the time was not legal. Like, it didn't work under State of Arizona laws. Shawna Bullock, the other legislator, signed on to a letter calling on Congress to either replace Biden's electoral votes with Trump votes or just put it all on ice until a full forensic audit could be completed."
"She was asking for Arizona Republicans to pick their own electors, not the electors who were chosen by the people of Arizona," said Berman. "You spoke to a bunch of legal analysts for this piece, Emma, on the issue of where the line is between free speech for Ginni Thomas or any American and action that might cross a line legally. What did they say?"
"Well, you know, Ginni Thomas has not responded to our story but her allies and friends and supporters have taken to social media to say, look, she's a citizen, she has first amendment free speech rights, she is allowed to say what she thinks," said Brown. "But legal experts say she wasn't just saying what she thought. She was becoming an active part of this effort to overturn the election. Of course, the effort to overturn the election has come before the Supreme Court in several instances. Cases related to that are sure to come to the court in the future. What they said is, look, she has a stake in those cases potentially. So, Clarence Thomas should recuse, because when a justice or a judge has a spouse who has an interest in a case before them, that justice or judge is supposed to recuse."
Watch the clip below or at this link.
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