Several of the country’s most respected legal scholars say that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas must immediately recuse himself from any cases relating to the 2020 election and its aftermath, now that it has been revealed that his wife, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, colluded extensively with a top White House adviser about overturning Joe Biden’s defeat of then President Donald Trump. On March 24th, the Washington Post and CBS News revealed that they had obtained copies of twenty-nine text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows, the Trump White House chief of staff, in which she militated relentlessly for invalidating the results of the Presidential election, which she described as an “obvious fraud.” It was necessary, she told Meadows, to “release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.” Ginni Thomas’s texts to Meadows also refer to conversations that she’d had with “Jared”—possibly Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who also served as a senior adviser to the Administration. (“Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am.”)
Stephen Gillers, a law professor at N.Y.U. and a prominent judicial ethicist, described the revelations as “a game changer.” In the past, he explained, he had supported the notion that a Justice and his spouse could pursue their interests in autonomous spheres. “For that reason, I was prepared to, and did tolerate a great deal of Ginni’s political activism,” he said. But “Ginni has now crossed a line.” In an e-mail reacting to the texts, Gillers concluded, “Clarence Thomas cannot sit on any matter involving the election, the invasion of the Capitol, or the work of the January 6 Committee.”…
Gillers’s e-mail to me laid out several reasons for why Thomas must now recuse himself from all such cases. Most narrowly, he said, these cases could “lead to discovery” of inappropriate conduct by Ginni Thomas; as her texts with Meadows demonstrate, “she actively insinuated herself in the events through her texts to Meadows, and perhaps more extensively.” Gillers continued, “That’s enough to require her husband to abstain from participation in any case in which her actions might be further revealed.” Justice Thomas, he said, clearly “has an understandable interest in protecting” his wife. For that reason alone, Gillers explained, “his impartiality might reasonably be questioned, which the law says requires recusal.” More broadly, Gillers argued, “Ginni became part of the team seeking to overturn the election. That team expressly identified, as a critical part of its strategy, appeals to the Supreme Court, and therefore to Clarence.” He added, “Ginni chose to make herself part of the story that the Trump side, her side, would then ask the Court, including her husband, to interpret in its favor.”