so all week long we've watched
republican senators imply
that judge contanji brown-jackson would
be an activist supreme court justice
that her in-line sentencing of child
pornography offenders
somehow impacts her ability to decide
cases impartially
but do you want to know what
i think could influence the justice's
decision making
more than any
pattern drawn from a few cherry pick
cases
any ideas
a politically active
spouse
enter jenny thomas virginia jenny thomas
is the wife of supreme court justice
clarence thomas she's a prominent
conservative activist as well
and wait for it 29 text messages 29
between jenny thomas and former white
house chief of staff mark meadows
revealed by the washington post and in
possession of the january 6 committee
have made it clear
that she's walked a very very fine line
between activist
and seditionist just three days after
the 2020 election thomas wrote
do not concede
it takes time
for the army
who is gathering for his back
on november the 10th after news
organizations declared joe biden the
winner
thomas wrote
help this great president stand firm
mark
you are the leader
the majority knows biden and the left is
attempting
the greatest heist
of our history
and four days after the insurrection on
january 6
ginny texted mark meadows
we are living through what feels like
the end of america
most of us are disgusted with the vp
and are in listening mode to see where
to fight with our teens
this
again coming from
the wife of a sitting supreme court
justice
she's actively pushing conspiracies to
overturn an american election
in the favor of donald trump
what a time joining me now to break this
all down
and there is a lot to break down joyce
vance nbc news legal analyst and former
us attorney joyce
wow
i mean just wow what stood out to you
about these text messages and do you
think there's anything in them that
might raise the eyebrows of people who
investigate crimes at the department of
justice
there are a lot of different threads to
pull here but i'll pull this one first
i'm the wife of a state court judge i
obviously have an active professional
career and i don't really restrict my
activities to accommodate my husband
he'll be shocked to hear but something
that my husband knows is that if he
pulls a case that involves something
that i'm working on he shouldn't hear
that case he needs to recuse and in this
sort of situation those rules are pretty
clear and so i think my my top level
take away zerlina is my surprise that
justice thomas didn't bend over
backwards to recuse from cases that
impacted matters that his wife was
directly involved in he didn't have to
overreach he didn't have to do it if it
was a close call but it's important if
people are going to have confidence in
the opinions that our courts issue that
they're not appear to be any taint or
any favoritism and so for justice thomas
to recuse for instance in cases that
involve the perpetuation of the big lie
would have been very appropriate if not
compelled
so i want to understand sort of the what
the rules are here um
what are the rules for supreme court
justices i mean we've heard sort of the
expression
the appearance of impropriety
but do they have to follow any rules
that are written down somewhere whether
it appear to be a conflict or is an
actual conflict when those cases come
before them on the court
so supreme court justices aren't bound
by the same code of conduct that binds
other federal judges the rules of ethics
that they are obligated to apply and
that they can be disciplined for failing
to conform to
and there are some technical legal
issues here involving separation of
powers
and and how you would enforce rules
against the supreme court that is
perhaps the reason that the chief
justice has been a real advocate for
letting the court police itself but
obviously we see that that can be
ineffective it only works as well as the
ability of each individual judge to
fully commit to engaging in ethical
rules
you know there is a statute that people
have been looking at this week and one
of the requirements it imposes
explicitly on justices so not just
judges which is what we call
our you know judges on the courts of
appeals and then the district courts
only supreme court justices carry that
label and they are required to recuse if
a person could look at their sitting on
a case and have concerns about their
impartiality
one of the things also that i was
thinking as i read all of these text
messages and again there are 29 text
messages which is a lot of text messages
between somebody and the white house
chief of staff to be clear um
is the fact that
it's not as if it was a case before the
court where she's on the board of some
corporation and they're you know on one
side of a case that the court is hearing
we're talking about text messages where
the context and the content of them are
talking about overturning an american
election
through illegal means
does that matter
is that different than if it were
you know an ethical violation of another
kind
i think it makes it even more
complicated because the reality here is
that we don't know exactly what's going
on it's certainly fair to say that jenny
thomas was involved in advocating for
congress to slow walk certifying the
2020 election that she wanted to find a
way for the former president to stay in
power another way of saying she wanted
the former president to stay in power is
to say that she was involved in plotting
at least at some level an insurrection
so we don't know the details i think
it's important for investigators looking
into january 6 to get those details but
again the overriding concern from
justice thomas's point of view shouldn't
be whether there's an actual conflict of
interest with her activities it needs to
be whether there's an appearance of
impropriety an appearance of a conflict
and the point here that all judges know
is that the courts don't have armies
that back up their decisions the courts
have power we abide by the rule of law
in this country because people have
confidence that the courts even though
they can be imperfect that they try to
be fair that the judges do their best to
render impartial rulings and so in this
situation where there's so much of an
appearance that jenny thomas had an
interest in the outcome of these
proceedings with the white house to
prevent the certification of the 2020
election it would be very appropriate
for justice thomas to stay away from
cases that implicate those sorts of
concerns
i actually want to read from one of the
other exchanges that they had meadows
writes this is a fight of good versus
evil evil always looks like the victor
until the king of kings triumphs
[Applause]
ginny wrote back thank you
needed that
i will try to keep holding on america is
worth it i mean
what text messages like this
uh
do to help us understand their state of
mind because i think the state of mind
and what people's intent
was during the you know all of these
conversations and planning in the
willard hotel all of that comes down to
what their intention was
um
what do these text messages tell us
about that
they tell us that there's investigation
that just has to be done here we're long
past the point where we can pretend that
the insurrection was some form of polite
civil discourse
it's important to know who was involved
and what they did and look not everyone
who was involved engaged in criminal
conduct but politically reprehensible
conduct isn't always criminal and i
think for the country to go forward we
have to look backwards at least in the
limited sense that we need to know who
was involved in seriously planning an
insurrection what was their role what
did they do what sorts of new laws do we
need to prevent it from happening again
and i don't think that we can pretend
that it's not shocking to see the wife
of a sitting supreme court justice
texting you know text buddies with the
white house chief of staff
talking about interfering with the
smooth transfer of power that's what
this is it's an abrogation of
time-honored american values and as much
as we see these texts over and over
again i think it hits us with full force
that a lot of people in american society
got sucked into something that should
have been unthinkable but that
unfortunately came very close to
succeeding
yeah it's really really scary to think
about um how the insurrection was the
end of a lot of conversations and
planning and um you know people paying
for travel there was a lot of stuff that
happened before what we saw on january 6
and we're only now starting to
understand all of that
i hope somebody at the department of
justice is uh making coffee joyce fans
thank you so much for being here as
always and helping us understand this
please stay safe
hi i'm zerlina maxwell thanks for
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