After it was revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas’ activist wife was in contact with one of the major brains behind Donald Trump’s attempts to reverse the election, Democrats increased their calls for him to resign from the Supreme Court on Thursday.
According to reports, emails between Ginni Thomas and John Eastman, who designed a scheme for Vice President Mike Pence to prevent Joe Biden’s 2020 victory from being certified, were seized by the House January 6 committee.
It shows Thomas was more involved in the election scheme than previously thought.
It rendered her husband’s job unsustainable, according to Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ).
‘Public trust in our nation’s top court is at an all-time low,’ he declared.
‘The American people have a right to wonder if right-wing jurists in our federal courts can fairly arbitrate the law.’
‘We have grown desensitized to horrible conduct by prominent people over the last several years, but Clarence and Ginni Thomas have participated in one of the biggest breaches of confidence ever witnessed in our legal system.’
He said that Justice Thomas was not a ‘neutral actor,’ but rather a ‘corrupt jurist.’
‘Clarence Thomas should resign with dignity and respect for our democracy.’
Other Democratic voices said that he should at the very least stay away from matters involving the election.
‘At this point, Ginni and Clarence Thomas are asking us to believe that she persuaded everyone she could possibly think of to reverse the election results except her powerful husband,’ tweeted Tommy Vietor, a leftist podcast presenter and former Barack Obama spokesperson.
‘He needs to recuse himself because it’s an evident falsehood.’
After the fresh information emerges, the House committee probing the attack on the US Capitol last year is expected to request an interview with his wife.
Representative Bennie G. Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee, told Axios, “We think it’s time that we, at some point, request her to come talk before the committee.”
Eastman, on the other hand, replied to the claims by stating that Thomas had just emailed to ask whether he might provide grassroots leaders an election update.
‘I can certainly affirm that at no point did I discuss any topics ongoing or expected to come before the Court with Mrs. Thomas or Justice Thomas,’ he said on Substack.
‘We have never had such conversations, will not have such discussions, and will not have such discussions in December 2020 or at any other time.’
The committee has gotten at least one email between Justice Thomas’ wife and Eastman, according to The Washington Post.
After the attorney fought to stop the release of more than a hundred papers, a federal judge ordered Eastman to hand them up to the committee last week.
According to prior accounts, Eastman, who worked as a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas, discussed possibilities for denying Biden the president in legal memoranda at an Oval Office meeting with Trump and Pence on Jan. 4 outlined options for denying Biden the office.
According to reports, Justice Thomas should have recused himself from any Supreme Court issue concerning the election due to Ginni Thomas’ involvement.
Between November 2020 and mid-January 2021, she exchanged at least 29 text conversations with Meadows as Trump’s loyalists battled feverishly to keep him in power.
And, according to a revelation published this week, she wrote 29 Arizona state legislators, asking them to pick their own electors and ignore Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
At least nine decisions relating to the 2020 election were made by Justice Thomas. He’s also made decisions in situations where Trump was opposing congressional investigators’ attempts to access his documents.
Ginni Thomas, on the other hand, claims that the two maintain their work separate.
In March, she told the conservative newspaper Free Bacon, “Clarence doesn’t share his job with me, and I don’t engage him in my work.”
Meanwhile, the focus of Thursday’s hearing will be on Trump’s efforts to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to tally and declare the election results. The vice president’s ceremonial responsibility is to oversee the formal certification of the presidential election.
Greg Jacob, Pence’s lawyer, and retired United States Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, an informal advisor, are slated to appear in person during the third of the committee’s projected six public sessions.
According to committee insiders, the focus of Thursday’s hearing would be on how Trump pushed the pressure campaign against Pence despite being warned by White House counsel’s office attorneys that Pence lacked the ability to unilaterally overturn election results.
The committee teased the hearing earlier this week by displaying video evidence from former White House counsel Eric Herschmann, who said on January 7 that he advised Eastman to “find a terrific effing criminal defense attorney.”
In the days running up to the certification on January 6th, Trump sent a series of tweets urging Pence to utilize his position to block Congress from recognizing his election loss to Joe Biden.
Pence had already informed Trump that he lacked such authority.
Eastman, on the other hand, submitted a document claiming that when Pence watched the certification of the electoral college tally on January 6th, he could overturn the election results.
Eastman’s paper envisioned a scenario in which Pence would ignore the votes of seven states in the Electoral College, ensuring that no candidate obtained the 270 votes needed to be proclaimed the victor.
The House would then decide on the election.
Each state delegation would therefore have had one vote for president, and because Republicans controlled 26 state delegates, Trump could have won the election if a majority of them voted for him.
Eastman’s assessment of the vice president’s participation in the primarily ceremonial procedure was disputed by constitutional academics and Pence himself.
On Wednesday, Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, told CNN that Pence fulfilled his responsibility by certifying the election results.
‘He understood that from the start, and I believe he and the president, as well as our office, were both clear on what his position was.’
I don’t think any small government conservative would welcome the idea that our founders would have given any single individual that much power to overturn election outcomes. Short told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “I believe the way they handled this was what does the constitution say.”
‘He did what he was supposed to do.’ He took an oath to protect the United States Constitution. ‘Just like our men and women in military, he swore an oath to God to preserve the constitution,’ he added.