Ginni Thomas is complicit
Last March, the Washington Post published text messages between Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, and Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff. Those messages revealed she was involved up to her neck in the MAGA plot to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
So any suggestion that her husband wasn’t complicit defies common sense.
Justice Thomas incriminates himself
Except that Thomas didn’t need his wife to make him complicit. He did that himself last January. He was the only justice who dissented when the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s bid to withhold documents from the January 6 committee. How’s that for sticking out like a sore thumb?
But he implicated himself again just last week. Thomas hears emergency appeals from the 11th Circuit. In this capacity, he granted the appeal Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) filed for a temporary stay from having to testify before a Georgia grand jury. It wanted to know if he pressured local officials to help Trump overturn the results of that election.
Except everyone knew Graham had no legal basis to resist testifying. Yet Thomas couldn’t resist the opportunity. And so he showed everyone that he’s more of a political hack for the Republican party than an impartial jurist on the Supreme Court.
Thomas knows he’s hopelessly compromised. Only that explains him emulating Donald Trump by doubling down on his open and notorious wrongdoing.
Indeed, just like Trump keeps bringing the Republican Party into disrepute, Thomas keeps bringing the Court into disrepute. And, just like Trump keeps forcing Republicans to clean up his mess, Thomas keeps forcing conservative justices to clean up his.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Here is what former Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe tweeted.
Justice Thomas violated 28 USC 455, requiring any “justice” to recuse when his or her ‘impartiality might reasonably be questioned’ or his or her ‘spouse is known by the justice to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome.’
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) October 24, 2022
Sure enough, his fellow justices duly cleaned up his latest mess on Tuesday by reversing his stay and ordering Graham to testify.
The smoking gun
That’s why – even though shocking – the damning report Politico published yesterday should be no surprise. Here is an excerpt:
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump saw Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their ‘only chance’ at overturning Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, according to emails turned over to congressional investigators and first obtained by Politico.
‘We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,’ Kenneth Chesebro, one of the then-president’s lawyers, wrote to other members of Trump’s legal team on Dec. 31, 2020.
In other words, those White shysters conspired to put a black face on the first coup in American history. And the self-debasing fact is that Thomas gave them cause to believe he would do their bidding.
They knew he was the kind of Black (aka an Uncle Tom) who is so eager to please Whites he would do dumb (and even racist) things no self-respecting White would ever do.
Think about it, folks: Republican presidents appointed five other justices to the Supreme Court. Hell, Trump nominated three of them. Yet these coup plotters singled out Thomas as the (blackey) lackey to do their coup bidding. Shame! Sad!
Legacy Note: With over 5,600 posts spanning 20 years, I am easily the most prolific blogger on the most eclectic array of topics on the web. That makes The iPINIONS Journal an unparalleled archive of informed political and cultural commentary. Visit the ARCHIVES section in the sidebar or search by topic. You won’t find a more consistent, independent voice on world affairs.