This week, a federal judge who ordered the release of Jan. 6 emails wrote that Trump “more likely than not” engaged in criminal conduct when he tried to stop Congress’ certification of the 2022 election (see story here).
Also this week, it emerged there’s a 7-hour gap in the January 6, 2021, White House phone records, even though it’s known that Trump was talking to people during that time (see story here).
We also learned that Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, was actively involved in trying to overturn the election (see story here). That was in documents the Supreme Court, by an 8-1 vote, ordered the National Archives on January 19, 2022 (see order here), to turn over to the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Justice Thomas was the “no” vote. In effect, he voted to keep secret his wife’s subversive activities, although he may not have known that (i.e., what was in those documents).
Since this relevation, Thomas has come under fire and faced demands to recuse himself from future Jan. 6 cases (see, e.g., story here). It’s curious why he didn’t, because he’s recused himself many times before (see story here).
His conduct in that case was scandalous, but the real scandal is his long-running hostility to democracy. As Vox pointed out here,”In more than three decades on the Supreme Court, Thomas has consistently voted to make it harder for many Americans to have their vote count; to erode institutions, like a free press, that are essential to democracy; and to dismantle nearly a century’s worth of democratically enacted laws” — all “on spurious constitutional grounds.”
This, Vox says, isn’t motivated by nepotism or family ties, but by a twisted judicial philosophy that would “turn back the clock on American law nearly an entire century,” to a time when minorities and women occupied much more disadvantaged positions in society. It’s not just Trump, or his wife, that Thomas is protecting, but a way of life that a most Americans today consider repugnant.
But while we may wish he wasn’t on the court, he is, and we can’t (and shouldn’t try to) relitigate his 1991 confirmation. It would be nice if Chief Justice Roberts heeded growing calls to promulgate a code of ethics for Supreme Court justices, although it’s not clear to me how he would enforce it against someone like Thomas.