the justice department also has a
similar responsibility
to take this
seriously
because this was an attempted coup the
washington post has reported that
virginia thomas the wife of supreme
court justice clarence thomas was much
more involved in efforts to overturn the
2020 election than previously known
specifically there are text messages in
the possession of the january 6th
committee which show jenny thomas
coordinating with white house chief of
staff mark meadows on strategy when it
comes to how to overturn the election
and suggesting that she was in touch
with other members of the white house in
that effort as well there are examples
of family members of supreme court
justices being involved in politics a
lot of times this will involve them
being lawyers in their own right for
example ruth bader ginsburg's husband
martin ginsberg was a renowned tax
attorney whose cases sometimes
overlapped with what the supreme court
was looking at
we also have family members including
ruth bader ginsburg's daughter who have
been involved in politics over the years
generally though we haven't seen a
situation like clarence and jenny thomas
where the justice's family member is
very deeply involved in political
activism
at the highest levels of government
meaning that there is often overlap
between what they're working on and what
their spouse or their family member
might be ruling on in the nation's
highest court
when judges do not base their decisions
on
neutral principles
these detrimental policies
with their judicial blessing
often persists for far longer than they
otherwise would have there has long been
a tension here between jenny thomas's
work and justice thomas's work on the
supreme court
i think what changed
with this new report is that we found
out not just that she is working on
issues that pertain to things the court
is doing but that perhaps the justice
was ruling on something and not recusing
himself from a case that could impact
what we know about his wife's own
activities supreme court recusals are a
difficult subject because this is
something that is solely at the
discretion of the justices
they are
given guidelines by which to gauge
whether they should recuse that
guideline is generally whether their
impartiality could reasonably be
questioned uh but we have seen numerous
occasions over the last several decades
and throughout history of justices
seemingly having things that could
reasonably call their uh impartiality
into question and still moving forward
with the case in the case of clarence
thomas even unlike previous recusal
controversies involving justice thomas
this is not a situation in which it's
merely about how his impartiality might
be questioned it's about whether this
might actually have benefited him and
the people in his family because of the
implications of how he voted it's also
worth noting here that the vote that
justice thomas took the key vote here
didn't actually wind up mattering he was
the only dissenting justice in the case
that gave the january 6 committee those
records and so that means eventually we
could learn to the extent those records
do reference jenny thomas and do involve
potentially her communications at which
point i think the conversation about
whether the justice should have recused
himself will take on a whole new life
there's enough evidence already i
believe that he should recuse himself
lots of democrats are calling for
justice thomas to recuse himself or
saying that he should have recused
himself in the past there certainly
could be other issues coming up when it
comes to the january 6th committee
including how to handle uh would-be
witnesses who are refusing to testify
democrats in some cases are calling for
thomas's impeachment just a few cases
not a whole lot at this point and that
movement hasn't really taken off
republicans have also been asked about
this and have basically punted in a way
they've said that this is up to justice
thomas he's a
jurist who has a lot of integrity and i
think he will he will make that decision
which it certainly is
but they have generally avoided talking
about the propriety of him staying on
this case and we do have other
republicans that basically say there's
no there there that justice thomas is a
principled man and that he should be
allowed to make this decision for
himself