washington — A bicameral group of Democrats is asking Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to back down from future cases before the Supreme Court over the 6-year attack on the US Capitol in an effort to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Two dozen House and Senate Democrats, including members of the judiciary committees in both houses, made the motion in a letter sent Monday to Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts. The group said the recent revelations of the Washington Post and CBS News Text messages exchanged by Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows regarding the 2020 presidential election “raise serious questions about Thomas’ involvement in the previous cases, given the potential conflicts of interest on.
“[G]Given the recent revelations about Ms. Thomas’ efforts to overturn the election, and her specific communications with White House officials regarding them, Judge Thomas’s involvement in cases involving the 2020 election and the January 6 attack is extremely grave compatible with federal ethical requirements. wrote the Democrats, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington. Other signatories included House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York and Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Twenty-nine SMS received from CBS News and the Washington Post show Ginni Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, urged Meadows to continue efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and keep former President Donald Trump in office. In some of the messages, Ginni Thomas indicated that she believed the election was stolen and shared with Meadows unsubstantiated theories that have been circulating online about President Biden and voter fraud.
In a letter sent to Meadows on Nov. 10, three days after Mr. Biden was predicted to win the presidential election, Ginni Thomas claimed Democrats were attempting the “biggest heist in our history.”
The 29 text messages were among more than 2,300 meadows made available to the House of Representatives to investigate the January 6 riot.
The public disclosure of the text messages has prompted a review of Thomas’s involvement in cases being tried in the Supreme Court involving the 2020 presidential election and an offer by Trump to keep his records in the White House from House investigators investigating the attack examine the Capitol. The High Court declined several long shot efforts to overturn election results in battleground states and declined Trump’s request to block the release of his documents.
But in the Jan. 6 dispute between Trump and the committee, Thomas was the only judge who took note of his objection, though he offered no explanation as to why he would have stopped the release of Trump’s records.
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He, along with Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, also disagreed with a February 2021 court decision not to hear two challenges to Pennsylvania’s election rules from Trump and his allies. Thomas wrote that the dismissal of the cases “encourages further confusion and erosion of voter confidence.”
Ginni Thomas told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview that she was “disappointed and frustrated” that there was violence on Jan. 6 declined to play any role with those who planned and led the events. Her husband also “doesn’t talk to me about his work and I don’t include him in my work.”
But in their letter to Thomas and Roberts, the 24 Democrats asked the 30-year High Court veteran to explain why he chose not to back down from the cases and urged the chief justice to commit to creating a bond commit to Code of Conduct for the Supreme Court no later than April 28.
While there is a code of ethics for the federal judiciary, this does not apply to Supreme Court justices. Although federal law dictates when a judge must withdraw from a proceeding, such decisions are typically within the discretion of each Supreme Court judge.
“While Congress considers its response to these latest revelations about possible violations of ethics laws by Judge Thomas, the Supreme Court has the responsibility and authority to act now,” the Democrats wrote, adding that “Chief Justice Roberts has often spoken about the Importance of has spoken of the “credibility and legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution”. That trust, already at an all-time low with the American public, must be earned.”
