ABC News
- Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar demanded Justice Clarence Thomas recuse himself from future election cases.
- Text messages from Thomas’s wife revealed she pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
- Texts between Thomas and former Trump White House chief of staff were shared with the House Jan 6. committee.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar called for Associate Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from elections cases. It follows the release of damning text messages from Ginni Thomas, the Supreme Court justice’s wife.
Ginni Thomas exchanged dozens of texts with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, urging him to overturn the 2020 election. She also pushed outlandish conspiracy theories that members of the “Biden crime family,” along with “ballot fraud co-conspirators,” were sent to Guantánamo Bay to face military trials for sedition.
A total of 29 text messages were exchanged between Thomas and Meadows from November 2020 to January 2021, CNN first reported on Thursday. The messages were obtained from Meadows by the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.
“Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back,” Thomas wrote to Meadows, according to The Washington Post.
In another message sent on November 10, 2020, days after the major news networks declared then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election, Thomas wrote to Meadows: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!”
“You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” the text continued, per The Post.
“This is unbelievable. You have the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice advocating for an insurrection, advocating for overturning a legal election to the sitting president’s chief of staff, and she also knows this election, these cases, are going to come before her husband. This is a textbook case for removing him, recusing him from these decisions,” Klobuchar said on ABC News “This Week.”
—This Week (@ThisWeekABC) March 27, 2022
Earlier this month, Thomas said she “played no role with those who were planning and leading the Jan. 6 events.”
Though Thomas is actively involved in politics and her husband sits on the nation’s highest court, she told the Free Beacon that the couple has “our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too.”
“Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” she said.
The Minnesota Democrat added: “All I hear is silence from the Supreme Court right now, and that better change in the coming week because every other federal judge in the country, except Supreme Court justices, would have guidance from ethics rules that says you got to recuse himself.”
Klobuchar issued a calling from stricter ethics rules for the Supreme Court, which currently is beholden to no such code of conduct because Congress has not created ethics rules for it. However, the Court could create rules for itself.
“The entire integrity of the court is on the line here, and they had better speak out on this because you cannot have a justice hearing cases related to this election,” Klobuchar said. “So not only should he recuse himself, but this Supreme Court badly needs ethics rules.”
Klobuchar did not say what would happen if Thomas refuses to recuse himself from future election cases. The associate justice has recused himself once before, from a 1996 case involving sex discrimination at the Virginia Military Institute, where Thomas’ son was a student at the time.
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