Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

President Biden's diplomatic efforts with allies continue to put pressure on Russia; Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas under scrutiny; what's next for ...

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(L-R) Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife and conservative activist Virginia Thomas arrive at the Heritage Foundation on October 21, ...

How does the scenario presented by Ginni and Clarence Thomas compare to the conflict-of-interest case that tainted Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas’s tenure on the court over 50 years ago? Though his dissent is silent to his true motivations he has thus involved and implicated himself in the insurrection. Second, on the grounds that it’s more useful than anything I might say at present, here is a piece I wrote for the NYT back in 2011 on the “extrajudicial” activities of Thomas, Alito, and others. He told The New York Times yesterday that Ginni Thomas’s conduct caused damage both to her husband and to the Supreme Court itself. These examples strike me as different in important respects, not least that the Senate in those cases had greater leverage to address the problem. They’re even more brazen today, if only because they have never faced any consequences (other than the opprobrium of the left and the mainstream media, opprobrium they welcome) for making political statements to politically minded crowds. Thomas gets to make his own call about recusal, and no one can do anything about it short of impeachment or a federal prosecution based on a judicial disqualification law no one is likely to pursue. There have been plenty of scandals over judicial nominees, as Justice Thomas knows all too well, but never one that caused a clear and continuing threat to the appearance of the court’s impartiality. At one point, Virginia Thomas appeared to reference her husband, the sitting Supreme Court justice, making both of them potential fact witnesses in a case and a cause that may end up back before the justices before too long. There have been plenty of scandalous Supreme Court rulings in its long history, but there has never been a scandal like this. We know, however, thanks to an extraordinary story that broke Thursday, that Virginia Thomas was relentlessly texting Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows from November 2020 until the date of the Capitol riot, urging Meadows and others to pursue baseless election-fraud charges and other stunts to try to overturn the results of Biden’s presidential victory. The current president, the duly-elected Joe Biden, had waived any executive privilege claims over the Trump team’s material in the hope he could save time for members of a House Select Committee as they go about investigating the riot and insurrection.