The left is now demanding that Clarence Thomas recuse himself over his wife’s text messages to Mark Meadows regarding the 2020 election.
First of all her text messages have nothing to do with Thomas himself. But as we saw in Ilhan Omar’s tweet calling for Thomas to be impeached, the left is making a bad argument about a vote from Thomas earlier this year regarding Trump’s petition to use executive privilege to block the release of his official White House records.
Here’s the tweet Omar retweeted this morning:
REMEMBER: Clarence Thomas was the ONLY “no” vote in an 8-1 decision to allow the release of Trump’s 1/6 documents showing plans to order the military to seize voting machines.
Now, texts show his wife was encouraging Trump to take “unrelenting efforts” to steal the election.
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) March 24, 2022
And here’s more on the calls for Thomas to recuse himself and why…
THE HILL – Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Friday said Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from any cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and, if former President Trump runs again, cases related to the 2024 election.
Wyden said Clarence Thomas’s “conduct on the Supreme Court looks increasingly corrupt” in the wake of the new reporting.
“At the bare minimum, Justice Thomas needs to recuse himself from any case related to the January 6th investigation, and should Donald Trump run again, any case related to the 2024 election,” Wyden added.
The new reports have also revived scrutiny over a January court ruling in which the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s bid to block administration records from being handed to the Jan. 6 House committee. The decision was 8-1 with Thomas as the lone dissent. It’s unclear if Ginni Thomas’s messages would have been in the White House records being disputed in court.
Wyden said judges should recuse themselves from participating in a case if there is “even the appearance of a conflict of interest” and that “a person with an ounce of commonsense could see that bar is met here.”
“Justice Thomas participated in cases related to Donald Trump’s efforts to rig and then overturn the 2020 election, while his wife was pushing to do the same. He was the lone dissent in a case that could have denied the January 6th Committee records pertaining to the same plot his wife supported,” he said.
They are claiming that Justice Thomas was the only justice that would have blocked the release of Trump’s 1/6 documents and they are suggesting it’s because of his wife’s text messages. But that doesn’t even make much sense because Meadows released his text messages to Pelosi’s hack committee back in early December, just a few days after Trump had submitted his request for an injunction. Thomas would have likely known that thus it would have been moot for him to vote to protect his wife after her text messages were already in the hands of the committee.
But even more so they are getting the January decision by Thomas wrong. In short, the vote by Thomas wasn’t to block Trump’s records from being released, but rather he would have granted a temporary injunction preventing the release of the records while the court considered the matter. Who knows how Thomas would have voted in the end but as Arthur Boreman pointed out on Twitter, his vote was regarding an injunction, not the final release of Trump’s documents:
We're delving back into Justice Thomas bc no one seems to be accurately reporting what happened, ANOTHER thread.
This time w/r/t assertions like this from the @BulwarkOnline:
"Justice Thomas indicated…he would have granted Trump’s request to withhold the documents."
/1
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) March 25, 2022
Well, quite simply no, at least from what I can tell.
Justice Thomas MAY have granted that request, but we have no indication of that.
What we do have indication of is that he would have granted a stay *prior* to deciding the case.
/2
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) March 25, 2022
Overly simplied:
DC Court of Appeals decided Trump had to turn over documents.
Trump did not want to and claimed executive privilege over them.
Biden said he was the executive now & there was no privilege.
Court held that the documents wouldn't be privileged regardless.
/2
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) March 25, 2022
Trump appealed to the Supreme court both against the ruling and, notably, made an "Emergency Application For A Stay Of Mandate Pending The Disposition Of Petition For Certiorari And Injunction Pending Review" linked below.
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) March 25, 2022
As you can see (and as someone familiar with Supreme Court filings could likely tell instantly), this filing is different than his Petition for a Writ of Certiorari (review this case for appeal), which is linked below.
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) March 25, 2022
On Jan 19, 2022, the Supreme Court denied the "application for stay of mandate and injunction pending review," not the case entirely (linked below)
This was SOLELY on whether the lower court's order should be stayed pending the Supreme Court decision
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) March 25, 2022
In THAT order, "JUSTICE THOMAS would grant the application," meaning he would not require Trump to comply with the lower court's order until the Supreme Court decided the petition for certiorari.
That does NOT mean he would grant Trump's appeal (he could, we don't know).
/6
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) March 25, 2022
On Feb 22, 2022, Trump's Petition for Certiorari was unceremoniously denied (see link below), with no indication of how Justice Thomas would have ruled on it.
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) March 25, 2022
So it strikes me that claims that "Justice Thomas would have allowed Trump to withhold these documents" are either dishonest, ignorant, or based on something not present in the record.
/8
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) March 25, 2022
So there you have it, more dishonesty from the left. Thomas knows all of this and I doubt he will ever consider recusing himself. But that won’t stop more and more of those on the left to demand it.