REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS AND HIS WIFE ARE BOTH AN AMERICAN DISGRACE

 

                  …Ginni Thomas is a one of the nation’s leading right-wing activists

 

Justice Thomas should have recused himself in a number of SCOTUS cases

 

There are a number of cases that Ginni Thomas’s name stood out among the signatories of a December letter from conservative leaders,  The letter blasted the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection as “overtly partisan political persecution.”

One month later, her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, took part in a case crucial to the same committee’s work: former president Donald Trump’s request to block the committee from getting White House records that were ordered released by President Biden and two lower courts.

Thomas was the only justice of the nine, to say he would grant Trump’s request.  (Even Trump’s three nominees were against Trump’s request.)

That vote has reignited fury among Clarence Thomas’s critics, who say it illustrates a gaping hole in the court’s rules.  That justices essentially decide for themselves whether they have a conflict of interest, and Thomas has rarely made such a choice in his three decades on the court.

“I absolutely do believe that Clarence Thomas should have recused from the Jan. 6 case,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonpartisan advocacy group, who called the Supreme Court “the most powerful, least accountable, institution in Washington.”

While the Supreme Court is supposed to operate under regulations guiding all federal judges, including a requirement that a justice “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” there’s no procedure to enforce that rule. Each justice can decide whether or not, to recuse, and there is no way to appeal a Supreme Court member’s failure to do so.

Unlike in lower courts, there is no other judge that can step in, and thus a recusal by one justice would mean considering the case with only eight justices, increasing the chance it could not be resolved.

Thomas, 73, has recused himself 32 times in the last 28 years, mostly on petitions never granted by the court, according to research by Roth’s group. (He recused himself more often in his first two years on the court, due partly to conflicts involving his previous employment.) He has recused himself in a family matter, sitting out a case involving a college that his son attended. But Thomas has never bowed out of a case due to alleged conflicts with his wife’s activism.

Republicans in Congress, harshly criticized Democrats who Ginni Thomas said were trying to make the country “ungovernable.” and she handed out awards to those who agree with her agenda.  Ginni Thomas also worked closely with the Trump administration and met with the then president.  She has come under fire over messages praising Jan. 6 crowds before the attack on the Capitol.  In a number of instances, her activism has overlapped with cases that have been decided by Clarence Thomas.

Thomas’s vote in the Jan. 6 case is such a striking conflict of interest, critics say, that some hope it sparks further support for long-sputtering efforts to toughen rules governing the justices.  That is an effort bolstered by a White House commission last month that noted the inherent problem with court’s recusals.

Caroline Fredrickson, a Georgetown University law professor who served on the White House commission, said that she could think of no precedent for Thomas’s decision to rule on issues closely linked to his wife’s activism.

“In every case that has come up, he has shown no interest in recusal and has in fact seemingly been defiant,” Fredrickson said. “To be a Supreme Court justice and to be married to a firebrand activist who’s trying to blow things up” is unique. “It’s so out of bounds that if it weren’t so frightening, it would be comical.”

The first major case that drew national attention to that potential conflict came back in 2000, when the fate of the U.S. presidential campaign between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore came before the Supreme Court.

At the time, Ginni Thomas was working with the Heritage Foundation to recommend people for jobs within a possible Bush administration. Some Democrats called for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from hearing the case that would decide the presidency, but Ginni Thomas told the New York Times at the time that “There is no conflict” and that she rarely discussed cases with her husband.

It was a pivotal, historic moment, and Gore faced a decision that would set the tone for politicians dealing with the court for years.  Pressed by his aides about whether to call out the perception of the conflict, Gore instead instructed his deputy campaign manager Mark Fabiani to issue a statement that said, “The vice president has the highest regard for the independent judiciary, so we’re not going to comment on the various questions that have been raised.”

Thomas then joined with the 5-to-4 majority that ruled for Bush.

Today, Fabiani looks back and sees Gore’s faith in the independence of the judiciary as a turning point in history.

“It’s an attitude that, today, seems positively quaint,” Fabiani told The Washington Post in an email. “I wish we had objected more vigorously to the Vice President’s high-minded advice … Ginni Thomas’ claim in 2000 that she doesn’t talk to her husband about Supreme Court business now seems laughable. Is there a single opinion that Justice Thomas has ever written that is inconsistent with his wife’s far right-wing views?”

Advocates have also said potential conflicts may extend to people who work with Ginni Thomas and file amicus “friend of the court” briefs.  The New Yorker earlier this year detailed how the Center for Security Policy, run by Frank Gaffney, paid Ginni Thomas’s company for consulting services; tax returns reviewed by The Post show the center paid $101,500 in 2017 and $134,500 in 2018 for consulting.

Gaffney and others filed an amicus brief in 2017 supporting Trump’s travel restrictions on people from Muslim-dominated countries.

The court upheld the restrictions by a 5-to-4 vote, with Clarence Thomas, of course, in the majority.

“We know that she has been a paid consultant to groups that have submitted these briefs before the court,” Hank Johnson, a Democratic congressman from Georgia, said.

Ginni Thomas founded Liberty Consulting, which she still operates. Her website does not list clients, but it says she speaks to “activist groups around the country.”

Ginni Thomas has reveled in her role as one of the nation’s leading right-wing activists, saying that conservatives must not “be complicit as the left moves its forces across our country.”

The Post reported in 2018 that she shared a post that accused Democrats of committing fraud in the midterms. She claimed that students who campaigned for gun control after surviving the mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school were “dangerous to the survival of our nation.” She claimed President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump, which was false.

She also wrote to officials in Clifton, Va., in 2020 urging that they take down a Black Lives Matter banner, saying “Let’s not be tricked into joining cause with radical extremists seeking to foment a cultural revolution because they hate America.”

Ginni was among a group called the Conservative Action Project who signed a Dec. 15, 2021, letter to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) decrying the probe. The letter said that the two Republicans on the panel, Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), should be removed as members of the House Republican Caucus, complaining that the committee put out “improperly issued subpoenas and other investigatory tactics designed not to pursue any valid legislative end, but merely to exploit for the sake of political harassment and demagoguery.”

Eight days later, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to stop White House records from his administration from being turned over to the congressional committee. “Congress may not rifle through the confidential presidential papers of a former President to meet political objectives,” the filing said.

Trump’s Chief-of-Staff, Mark Meadows, the self-described teammate of Ginni Thomas, filed a brief in support of Trump’s request.

On Jan. 19, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s request. Clarence Thomas, was the lone justice to say he would have sided with Trump.  He did not explain his reasoning.

Clarence Thomas has been a disgrace as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).  His wife has also been an American disgrace.

Copyright G. Ater 2022