Two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee called on the Supreme Court justice to recuse himself from election-related cases after text messages from his wife, Ginni Thomas, emerged showing she had pushed the Trump White House to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
WASHINGTON — Two Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sunday called on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from certain cases after his wife pressed the Trump White House in text messages to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The texts by Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni and is a lawyer by training, first reported by The Washington Post and CBS News, revealed she had reached out to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows multiple times in the weeks after the 2020 election pushing the baseless charge that the election had been stolen and urging Trump officials not to accept the results. At the time, President Donald Trump and his allies had vowed to take their efforts to overturn the election results to the Supreme Court. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota – who is also a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight of federal judicial and Supreme Court nominees – called the situation a “textbook case” in which Thomas should recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election. Klobuchar suggested the integrity of the Supreme Court is on the line. “The facts are clear here. This is unbelievable,” Klobuchar said on ABC News’s “This Week.” “You have the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice advocating for an insurrection, advocating for overturning a legal election to the sitting president’s chief of staff. And she also knows this election, these cases are going to come before her husband.” “This is a textbook case for removing him, recusing him from these decisions,” she added. Thomas was the only justice to dissent in the Supreme Court’s decision in January to reject Trump’s request to block documents from being released to the House select committee investigating the Jan.6,2021, insurrection. Judges who serve on other federal courts are required by ethics rules to recuse themselves in cases that would give the appearance of impartiality, but Supreme Court justices are not subject to an ethical code – a double standard that Klobuchar said Chief Justice John G.
