“Biden and the Left [are] attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
“[The] Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators…are being arrested and…will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”
Oh yeah, and “Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states.”
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These aren’t the rantings of some obscure, tinfoil hat-wearing lunatic. These are just a few of the 29 text messages sent by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. These messages were sent in the wake of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory, as Mrs. Thomas sought to push Meadows to try to overturn the 2020 election results—sometimes quoting far-right websites to make her case.
In a world where more tenuous relationships than a spouse have sparked huge controversies (think Barack Obama’s relationships with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the former Weather Underground activist Bill Ayers), the level of this conflict of interest should be condemned by intellectually honest conservatives.
As one smart observer put it, “If you had a problem with Bill Clinton meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the tarmac, you should probably have a problem with Ginni Thomas’s barrage of texts to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the days preceding a legitimate self-coup attempt.”
To be sure, spouses of the powerful are allowed to have jobs. Couples often meet in professional circles, and it feels anachronistic to suggest that a woman who was already a political professional in her own right should be forced to sit on the bench so that her husband can sit on the bench.
Then again, Ginni isn’t just “some spouse.” She’s the wife of a Supreme Court Justice, who also happens to have her own direct line to the White House. (Meadows responded to one of Mrs. Thomas’ texts with “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs.”)
Common sense dictates that it’s wrong for a judge to rule on cases in which his spouse is advocating. And while Thomas was the only Justice who voted to approve Donald Trump’s request to withhold documents from the Jan. 6 Committee, the “29 texts” in question were not among the ones Thomas voted to keep out of the committee’s hands.
Still, Justice Thomas likely should have recused himself on a number of occasions, and now that we know the extent that his wife was personally involved in helping to orchestrate an attempted coup, he probably should also do so in the future.
There are real-world consequences that ought to transcend the professional ambitions of an individual. In a world where most Americans no longer trust their government and where the Supreme Court’s approval has hit a new low, the appearance of impropriety only further erodes trust.
However unlikely, it’s theoretically possible Ginni Thomas could be charged with sedition. But no matter how much “Resistance” Twitter might wish it to be so, there is little chance Clarence Thomas will be impeached—and there is zero chance that Thomas will lose his spot, because removing a Justice is virtually impossible.
Only one SCOTUS Justice, Samuel Chase, was impeached by the House, and that was back in 1804. But actually removing a Justice requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate (and Chase was acquitted on all counts in the Senate).
If Trump couldn’t be removed from office for trying to shake down Ukraine or barred from office for inciting an insurrection, it’s hard to imagine Thomas would be removed as a result of being married to someone with some really bad ideas.
But let’s not lose sight of the fact that Ginni Thomas isn’t just "an activist," and her views aren’t just “controversial” or “unconventional.” I mean, we are talking about a Supreme Court Justice’s wife leaning on a White House chief of staff using QAnon conspiracy theories and the language of far-right Christian nationalists to overturn a free and fair election.
Ginni Thomas is not some lonely, fringe figure. And she isn’t some random “rube” listening to crank podcasters and trawling 8chan from a little home in the “heartland.” She resides in the power center of the free world, firmly entrenched in the mainstream conservative movement.
This is to say, it’s now obvious that the lies around the Big Lie are fully accepted as fact among conservative D.C. elites. These aren’t Marjorie Taylor Greene congressional backbenchers, these are major players who are calling the shots and supping from the witches’ brew of bullshit (QAnon, Alex Jones’ InfoWars, Pizzagate) that polluted the brains of the Jan. 6 rioters.
Whatever consequences the Thomases might face (likely none), conservatives ought to use this as an opportunity to stop waving away the Big Lie as oh-so-much MSNBC panic-mongering.
Trump’s refusal to accept that he lost—enabled by conservative elites like Ginni Thomas—is a festering wound on American democracy. Be outraged about it, or don’t act outraged about anything.
