Clarence Thomas is facing calls for his recusal in the case over race-based affirmative action in college admissions that the court agreed to hear this week.
The case, which is being brought against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, is the latest potential conflict of interest involving Thomas and his wife Virginia Thomas. Ginni, as she is known, is a prominent right-wing activist who openly supports MAGA platform issues that frequently come before the Supreme Court.
[a photoshopped image of Ginni Thomas with her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas]
Ginni Thomas founded her own lobbying company, Liberty Consulting, in 2010. By her own description, she has “battled for conservative principles in Washington” for over 35 years. Justice Thomas’s influence has soared in recent months with the rightward shift of the court following Donald Trump’s three nominations, to the extent that some pundits now dub him the unofficial chief justice of the court.
If SCOTUS is truly apolitical, as Justices like to pretend, they would address clear conflicts of interest held by Clarence Thomas (Ginni’s husband), evidenced most recently by his lone vote against lower and appeals court rulings on executive privilege. At minimum — recusal.
Aside from the conflict of interest depicted in the Harvard and UNC case, Ginni Thomas lent her voice to Trump’s big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. She was vocal on the subject in the weeks leading up to the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th that led to the deaths of five people and left more than 100 police officers injured. On the morning of January 6th itself, Thomas posted on her Facebook page words of encouragement for the “Stop the Steal” marchers in Washington. “LOVE MAGA people!!!!”, she said., “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”
Soon after the insurrection, Thomas was forced to apologize to her husband’s former Supreme Court law clerks for comments she made privately to them that appeared to lament Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. The remarks were sent to a private email list called “Thomas Clerk World”. In the emails, disclosed by the Washington Post, she wrote: “Many of us are hurting, after leaving it all on the field, to preserve the best of this country. I feel I have failed my parents who did their best and taught me to work to preserve liberties.” Ginni Thomas also joined 62 other influential conservatives in signing an open letter to the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. It urged him to expel the Congress members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from the Republican party.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything quite like it in the history of the Supreme Court, you have the wife of one of the justices who is so tangled up in so many of these explosive issues that are right before her husband’s court” – @JaneMayerNYer w/ @NicolleDWallacepic.twitter.com/wqYcRzSuyA
But the most telling sign of Ginni Thomas having influence over her husband was reflected in his standalone vote to keep Trump’s White House records private, which some say is glaring admission of where his loyalties are, and he should resign from the bench immediately.
SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas must resign and wife Ginni Thomas investigated immediately.
Plus, any SCOTUS decisions where she was involved in the case must be reconsidered.
— 🖕🏻Aunt Crabby Calls Bullshit 🖕🏻 (@DearAuntCrabby) January 22, 2022
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Is now a good time to pressure Clarence Thomas to resign over his wife’s support of the Jan 6 insurrection?
