Clarence Thomas Has No Shame. But You Knew That.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas thinks he is above the law and that no ethical rules apply to him. And he wants you to know it.

That’s why he participated in the oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Thursday about Colorado removing Donald Trump from the ballot under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which expressly bars anyone who engages in insurrection from holding office.

Thomas went out of his way to ask the first question, though he rarely asks questions at oral arguments.

He shouldn’t be participating in this case–he knows no fair judge would. After all, his wife, Ginni, actively participated in trying to overthrow the 2020 election.

His doing so is an in-your-face rebuke to the millions of Americans who care about fair judges, fair courts, and the rule of law.

Thomas choosing to participate in cases involving Trump’s claims of being above the law, including a case involving his incitement of an insurrection against our nation and in disregard of our Constitution, is truly beyond the pale.

Ginni Thomas actively pushed Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows to help overturn the 2020 election results. She texted Meadows at least 29 times after the 2020 election with false claims about the election, touting conspiracy theories, and pushing for Trump not to concede. She continued to assert those debunked claims during the House January 6th Committee investigation. She also sent messages to John Eastman, a former Thomas clerk who was helping Trump subvert the election.

She was a VIP at the January 6 events on the National Mall where Trump incited the crowd to fight. She claims she left before the violent insurrection at the Capitol killed and injured police officers and threatened the lives of Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other elected representatives and later disavowed the violence. But in a January 6th Facebook post ahead of the violence unleashed that day she wrote “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” She even texted Meadows a few days after the insurrection that she was “disgusted with the VP,” as the Washington Post documented. But she never expressed her disgust for Trump’s role in urging the armed crowd to blame Pence and stop Americans’ votes from being counted.

Ginni later claimed she never discusses politics with her husband, but she has also said she discusses everything with her “best friend”–Clarence Thomas. As the Washington Postnoted:

“When Meadows wrote to Thomas on Nov. 24, the White House chief of staff invoked God to describe the effort to overturn the election. ‘This is a fight of good versus evil,’ Meadows wrote. ‘Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.’

Thomas replied: ‘Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!’”

It is a blatant and unbelievable lie that she never discusses politics with her husband. Just look at the political messages she sent to his law clerk listserv in support of Trump that were considered so inappropriate that some of those clerks even broke ranks to leak and speak to the press about her diatribes. She even apologized to the clerks for sharing her “lifelong passions” in those messages.

Clarence Thomas’ role in the Colorado case also makes it plain that Chief Justice John Roberts has done nothing to require that Thomas follow the basic ethical standards that apply to all other judges.

Late last year, as part of the Chief Justice’s PR spin to thwart Congress from adopting needed ethics reforms, Roberts announced a “code of ethics” that has supposedly been in effect for years. His announcement was timed for the eve of a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee to approve subpoenas to Thomas’ billionaire benefactor and Nazi paraphernalia collector Harlan Crow and to Leonard Leo, who helped get Thomas confirmed and helped select the other Republicans appointed to the Supreme Court, including John Roberts. That investigation of Thomas is strongly supported by Americans, across party lines. His code was widely panned on arrival for being unenforceable and largely just window dressing.

But even Roberts’ uselessly unenforceable code states that a “Justice should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.”

It also says recusal is warranted if a “Justice has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding…”

Does any reasonable person who is not a partisan for Trump really believe Thomas has no personal bias and no personal knowledge about the insurrection and his wife’s role in goading it on, while most Americans were spending endless hours with their spouses during the deadly Covid-19 pandemic?

Ginni Thomas was literally emailing legislators, like Shanna Bolick in Arizona and others in Wisconsin, to try to get them to overturn the votes of millions of Americans for Joe Biden to be president of the U.S.

Another part of the toothless Roberts’ code says recusal is warranted if “the Justice or the Justice’s spouse … is known … to be a party to the proceeding, … to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding; or … likely to be a material witness in the proceeding…”

Actually, federal law requires recusal whenever a judge knows his spouse has “any” interest substantially affected by the outcome of a case OR where his “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

Thomas’ purported impartiality is definitely reasonably in question, despite the assertions of his apologists like Mark Paoletta, the guy sitting between Thomas and Leonard Leo in the now famous commissioned painting with Harlan Crow and the cigars, which True North Research uncovered. Paoletta represented Ginni in her appearance before the January 6 committee, flacked vanity projects for Thomas, and assailed journalists who reported about Thomas’ corruption.

Despite Paoletta’s spin, Ginni Thomas was not only actively pushing Trump’s right-hand man to stop the election results, but she also texted Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and advisor in the White House, in the weeks between the election and the insurrection. And for years before the 2020 election, she was given insider influence and access about who should staff key Trump posts. She certainly has a stake in the case whose central tenet is how Trump engaged in weeks of planning to subvert the 2020 election results, culminating in the violence he incited on January 6.

Ginni was using her insider access to repeatedly push Trump’s top advisors, promoting the Big Lie as well as the big liars behind it like Rudy Guiliani and Sydney Powell. Ginni called on Meadows to “Unleash the Kraken,” the phrase used by Powell to insinuate she had evidence–evidence that never materialized–supporting the Big Lie as part of her efforts to justify Trump’s attempted coup. Powell has since pleaded guilty in Georgia for wrongfully interfering in the state’s election in order to aid Trump’s effort to stay in power.

Clarence Thomas should have recused himself from the Colorado case and other cases involving Trump–like the one where he was the sole dissent against giving Congress access to White House materials involving the insurrection. These materials contained Ginni’s texts to Meadows and Kushner.

Commentators are now busy speculating how the Court will rule in the Colorado case, though very few are noting that Thomas should have no role in this decision–with exceptions like MSNBC's Lawrence O’Donnell.

There are a lot of tea leaves being read about how the justices will vote based on the questions the judges on the high court posed in the oral argument. Just look at Brett Kavanaugh’s outlandish assertion that the 14th Amendment’s bar on insurrectionists is vague and would wrongly disenfranchise voters, even though what Trump was doing in inciting his mob to stop the count would have disenfranchised more than 80 million voters.

Then there’s Roberts’ purported concern about the practical effects of following the law. If only the Court had entertained concerns about the practical effect on the rights and health of Americans who can no longer legally access abortion care due to the right-wing faction’s willingness to impose their religious beliefs as binding law by overturning Roe v. Wade, discarding decades of legal precedent.

Some commentators are speculating that in order to avoid criticism by Trump supporters for following the command of the 14th amendment, the Supreme Court’s vote could be 6-3 or even 8-1 to allow Trump to remain on the ballot.

I fear that such an outcome will put the country on the path toward a civil war next winter if Trump were to win on the ballot but then be rightfully disqualified from having any of the votes for him count.

After all, a majority of Members of both Houses of Congress already found Trump engaged in insurrection as part of the second impeachment proceedings, even though there was not a super-majority of votes to convict him in the Senate. Fifty-seven U.S. Senators found him guilty as charged.

It matters what the Court rules, whether it will apply the Constitution as written to Trump. It matters whether these justices will follow the law–despite my doubts that they will. I think they will be cowards, if not partisans for Trump, and claim they are protecting our Constitution, though the text of the document clearly bars insurrectionists.

But Thomas should not be allowed to cast a vote in the case, regardless of the vote count on the Court. He should be disqualified. (In fact, he should be impeached for his corruption, even independent of his inappropriate decision to not recuse from this case.)

But what if, against all of the odds the partisan judges appointed by Republican presidents do not agree to side with their party and instead side with the patriotic Republican who brought the Colorado case.

What if it is a 5-4 decision, and Thomas casts the deciding vote, an illegitimate vote?

We’ve lived through that before, and it was in many ways a disaster for our country, our courts, and the world. That ruling led to the current 6-3 majority on the Court, after Bush won as an incumbent in 2004.

Back in 2000, Thomas, too, refused to recuse himself from the Bush v. Gore case.

He cast the deciding vote to stop the recount in Florida making George W. Bush president, even though Bush lost the popular vote and even though when the votes were ultimately counted Bush actually lost Florida, too.

Again, Thomas, by casting the tie-breaking vote in Bush v, Gore, ruled in a case that his wife had vested interest in. Ginni had been actively screening and recruiting appointees for the future Bush administration when she worked at the Heritage Foundation.

After Clarence Thomas failed to recuse himself, Ginni got promoted by the Heritage Foundation to be the Director of Executive Branch Relations, working with the Bush administration.

In that role, liaising with the administration her husband’s vote secured the presidency for, they were rewarded: she received nearly $1 million in compensation over the next seven years. (See chart below.)

Ginni became one of Heritage’s highest-paid non-board employees, and Clarence Thomas basked in her leadership role there: he was photographed at Heritage events touted as opportunities for its funders/members to meet officials.

(Even before those perks, Clarence Thomas had helped Heritage raise nearly $100 million as part of its fundraising campaign, which included–I kid you not–speeches about Thomas touting his good character.)

By the way, Ginni was not the only one rewarded for their role in Bush v. Gore. Roberts got rewarded, too, with a nomination to the D.C. Circuit and then promoted to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. In essence, Thomas’ ethical failure in refusing to recuse secured Roberts’ his dream job on the Court–with the support of Leo, too.

Both Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett also volunteered to aid Bush in the Florida recount, and they too now sit on the Supreme Court of the United States, despite millions of Americans who opposed them.

Notably, Thomas also did not recuse himself in the Citizens United case, which unleashed a tsunami of dark money in elections. That was another 5-4 ruling where Thomas cast the tie-breaking vote, even though his billionaire buddy, Crow, had just staked his wife Ginni with a half million dollars for her new group called Liberty Central, which was designed to take advantage of that ruling to come. Thomas should have recused himself then if he had any judicial ethics at all–but he clearly does not.

Clarence Thomas’ corruption seems to have no limits–from private jets, to private school tuition for his nephew, to six-figure RVs, to luxury mega-yacht trips to Greece and New Zealand, to letting his mom live rent-free in a refurbished house now owned by Crow, and who knows what other perks–like thousand dollar bottles of wine–have yet to be reported on.

But the gall of Thomas choosing to participate in cases involving Trump’s claims of being above the law, including a case involving his incitement of an insurrection against our nation and in disregard of our Constitution, is truly beyond the pale.

It is unprecedented. It’s wrong. And it’s an appalling testament to how corrupted, how political, and how morally bankrupt the Roberts Court really is.

Key Clarence Thomas Timeline

After Clarence Thomas refused to recuse himself in the 5-4 Bush v. Gore case–even though his wife was screening resumes for GOP activists seeking jobs with Bush if he won–Ginni was promoted by the Heritage Foundation to be the Director of Executive Branch Relations, working with the Bush administration. She received nearly $1 million in compensation over the next seven years. She became one of Heritage’s highest-paid non-board employees, and Clarence Thomas was photographed at Heritage events that it touted as opportunities for its funders/members to meet officials.

1998:

Ginni’s compensation is unknown but less than $98,982; unclear when she started at Heritage.
Title: “Senior Fellow in Government Studies”
That year, Clarence Thomas helped Heritage raise money as part of the “Heritage 25: Leadership for America” tour where Thomas spoke about character. (Later, Thomas supported speaker fees.)

1999:

Ginni is paid $115,075, and she is the fifth highest-paid HF employee who is not on the board.

Title: “Senior Fellow in Government Studies”

By December 1999, Heritage’s Leadership for America campaign had raised more than $100 million, over $15 million more than its goal for the two-year fundraising campaign.

2000:

She is paid less than $125,756, and is not one of the five highest-paid non-board employees.

Title: “Senior Fellow in Government Studies”/activities: screening potential Bush appointees

Thomas was the keynote speaker of the Heritage-adjacent “Awakening” event at Sea Island, the event that preceded Thomas telling Rep. Cliff Stearns he was in debt, needed more money, and he might resign without more income. Heritage was intensely engaged in trying to set the policy agenda for a new administration if Bush were to win. Clarence Thomas refused to recuse even though Ginni is screening people for jobs in the Bush administration. Bush v. Gore is a 5-4 ruling.

2001:

She is paid $121,092, and she is the fifth highest-paid employee who is not on the board.

Promoted to: “Director of Executive Branch Relations”

Ginni gets promoted. Her new job was working with the administration her husband’s vote made

possible. Bush was inaugurated due to the 5-4 SCOTUS ruling, even though Gore would have won.

2002:

She is paid $128,458 and is the highest-paid employee who is not on the board.

Title: “Director of Executive Branch Relations”

2003:

She is paid $121,291; she is the second highest paid non-board employee. (Was the bump in 2002 a bonus?)

Title: “Director of Executive Branch Relations”

2004:

She is paid $131,316, and she is the highest-paid employee who is not on the board.

Title: “Director of Executive Branch Relations”

2005:

She is paid $144,245, and she is the highest-paid employee who is not on the board.

Title: “Director of Executive Branch Relations”

2006:

She is paid $144,193, and she is the highest-paid employee who is not on the board.

Title: “Director of Executive Branch Relations”

2007:

She is paid $145,544, and she is the fourth highest-paid employee who is not on the board.

Title: “Director of Executive Branch Relations”

2008:

Compensation unknown but less than $158,953 paid to the lowest of the top five employees.

TOTAL: Nearly $1.2 million (at least $1,166,289); almost one million after Bush v. Gore ($936,139).