'Do the honorable thing': Clarence Thomas urged to recuse in Trump case
House Democrats on Monday called for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from a pending case involving former President Donald Trump and the insurrection effort that took place on January 6, 2021.
A letter spearheaded by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and signed by seven other Democrats cites the participation of Thomas' wife, Ginni Thomas, in the far-right scheme to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election results, in which Trump was soundly defeated by President Joe Biden, as reason enough for the Thomas to recuse himself from a question before the court about the former's president immunity from prosecution.
According to the letter:
We know through public reporting and through congressional investigations that your wife, Virginia ("Ginni") Thomas was intimately involved in Mr. Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and to obstruct its certification—the very conspiracies at issue in this case. Your wife not only attended the pro-Trump rally that preceded the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, she was one of nine board members for a conservative political group that helped lead the "Stop the Steal" movement.
Special Counsel Jack Smith petitioned the court to grant certiorari after Trump's legal team moved to have the case against him thrown out under a claim that he is immune from prosecution due to the fact that he was the sitting president at the time of the alleged criminal conduct. To move the case forward in the lower courts, Smith asked the Supreme Court to rule on the question of claimed immunity.
With the petition before the nine-member court, the Democrats argue that Justice Thomas must not be allowed to weigh in on a case in which his wife played such an active and prominent role.
"Your wife's activities raise serious questions about your ability to be or even to appear impartial in any cases before the Supreme Court involving the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection," the letter states.
In addition to Johnson, the letter was signed by Reps. Jamie Raskin (Md.), Madeleine Dean (Pa.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Gerald E. Connolly (Va.), Jasmine Crockett (Texas) and Dan Goldman (N.Y.).
After providing specific details of Ginni Thomas' involvement in the scheme to subvert the election, the letter suggests to Justice Thomas that he has little choice but to step aside in the case known as U.S. v. Trump.
"If you want to show the American people that the Supreme Court's recent Code of Conduct is worth more than the paper it is written on," it states, "you must do the honorable thing and recuse yourself from any decisions in the case of United States v. Trump."