When Joe Biden’s victory was announced in November 2020, Virginia Thomas was convinced that the ballot was “an obvious fraud” and was struggling to keep Donald Trump in power. A few days later, this influential conservative activist, wife of one of the nine justices of the Supreme Court, sends a series of text messages to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s chief of staff. “Don’t concede [la victoire à Biden]”, she implores him in one of the 29 messages published recently in the press. “It takes time for the army that supports him to come together.
In the following weeks, “Ginni”, as it is called, spreads on Facebook and continues to pressure Meadows by taking up conspiracy theories: the “Biden mafia family” is being arrested and will be sent to Guantanamo to stand trial for “sedition”, she writes. She says she is “disgusted” by Vice President Mike Pence who has recognized Trump’s electoral defeat. On November 10, she said, “Help this great president hold his ground, Mark!!! The left is trying the biggest heist in our history.” She then participated in Donald Trump’s rally in Washington on January 6, 2021, which ended with the assault on the Capitol.
While she dreams of a coup and Trump and his allies file petitions with the Supreme Court hoping to have the ballot overturned, her husband Clarence Thomas, a 73-year-old black judge appointed to the post by George Bush Sr. in 1991, continues to sit as a great sage. Does he know what his wife is up to? In a text message, she mentions a conversation with “her best friend”, as she often refers to her husband.
It smacks of conflict of interest, especially since Thomas is a fierce Trumpist. In February 2021, he was one of the few to vote for the Court to consider an election appeal launched by pro-Trumps, while the majority of the wise voted against. And last January, he was the only one to oppose the Court authorizing the Commission of Inquiry into the events of January 6 to access the archives, phone calls and internal documents of the White House during this period.
Intense politicization of the Court
“It’s a big problem for Clarence Thomas, says Richard Painter, professor of law at the University of Minnesota and former ethics officer in the Bush administration. His impartiality is in doubt. He is not responsible for his wife, but he has a duty to recuse himself on insurrection-related petitions. This case discredits the Supreme Court,” he added. In fact, the reputation of the highest judicial body has already been tarnished. According to a poll by the Pew Research Center, 44% of Americans have an unfavorable view of the institution, a drop of 15 points in three years.
This is due to its intense politicization in recent years, encouraged by the Republicans. At the end of Barack Obama’s term, right-wing senators, for example, refused to hear the Democratic presidential candidate. Then they had Trump appoint three very conservative judges – the last of whom a week before the 2020 election – who are now seeking to overturn the judgments protecting the right to abortion or the right to vote. This imbalance – six wise Republicans against three Democrats – is detrimental to the democratic balance, because the Supreme Court rules on all major social debates, from gay marriage to access to the polls, including environmental protection. .
As for the selection process, it turns into a circus. We have seen it in recent days with the treatment of Ketanji Brown Jackson. This federal judge with a brilliant career will be, if confirmed, the first black woman to sit in two hundred and thirty-three years. But several Republican senators, during the hearings, adopted an almost hostile attitude, trying to present her as a leftist, too lax with pedophiles.
Impartiality questioned, sexual harassment…
As for Clarence Thomas, this is not the first time that he has been at the heart of a scandal. In 1991, when he was confirmed, he was accused by several women of sexual harassment. And the activities of his wife have been talking about for a long time. “Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me and I don’t involve him in mine,” Ginni assured in a recent interview. But unlike judges’ spouses who keep a low profile, this 65-year-old blonde grandee is involved in a host of political organizations and the couple often appear in public at conservative conferences.
Ginni Thomas lobbied against Barack Obama’s health care reform to such an extent that seventy elected Democrats asked her husband to recuse himself when the wise men had to rule on the subject. He refused. In 2018, a group for which she was a consultant campaigned in the Supreme Court for the maintenance of a Trump executive order that barred entry to the territory to nationals of Muslim countries. Clarence Thomas voted to retain it.
Democrats are calling for him to recuse himself in future on matters related to the insurgency. The Republicans, they minimize the scandal. It is an attempt to “delegitimize a distinguished member” of this institution, claims Edwin Meese III, Ronald Reagan’s former justice minister. The highest court does not have its own code of conduct. A sage, however, is expected to recuse himself if his “impartiality may reasonably be questioned”, or if his spouse has “an interest which could be significantly affected” by the decision. But there is no mechanism forcing it to do so. Will Clarence Thomas sit in the next appeals related to January 6? To have.