Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, took to Twitter on Friday calling out Thomas, saying he is “corrupt as hell and should resign from the Supreme Court.”
Thomas, a conservative justice, is presiding over Moore v. Harper, a controversial case about the power to draw and strike down electoral maps in North Carolina.
In Moore v. Harper, Republicans are asking the Court whether electoral maps can be redrawn and if state courts have the legal authority to throw out previous versions. The justices are considering the “Independent State Legislature theory,” which holds that courts do not have the power to strike down maps drawn by state legislatures. The Court will likely not hand down a decision on Moore until next year.
The Brennan Center for Justice called Moore v. Harper “an appeal advocating for extreme interpretation of the Constitution that could make it easier for state legislatures to suppress the vote, draw unfair election districts, [and] enable partisan interference in ballot counting.”
Ginni has faced scrutiny over conversations she had with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows encouraging then-President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to documents obtained by CBS and The Washington Post.
In the lead-up to last year’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, the board of the Council for National Policy—of which Ginni is a part of—instructed its members to “pressure Republican lawmakers into challenging the election results and appointing alternate slates of electors.”
Thomas’ wife, according to media reports, worked not only with White House staff, but with state-level officials in Arizona and Wisconsin in an attempt to throw out the results of the election, presumably in favor of Trump.
Ginni has repeatedly defended her professionalism in regard to her relationship with her husband. In an interview with the Washington Free Beacon in March, she said: “Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America, but we have 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.”
Meanwhile, Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard University, recently told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that the conservative justice may have violated 28 U.S. Code § 455 because he has not removed himself from Moore v. Harper.
Tribe also spoke about two provisions that would require nonparticipation.
“One of them says that a justice—and it specifically applies to Supreme Court justices—may not participate if somebody could reasonably question that justice’s impartiality,” the professor said, who also cited a section that says a justice should not be involved in a case if their spouse has an interest.
Political analyst Craig Agranoff told Newsweek on Saturday, “Yes that’s a conflict of interest so I think [Thomas] should recuse, but they are held to a different standard. Stepping down I don’t think is necessary. Any judge other than a Supreme Court Justice would have to recuse [themselves]. But because it’s the Supreme Court, there’s no higher court to require him to do it.”
Former Secretary of Labor under former President Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, also voiced concern over Thomas’ wife and tweeted Wednesday: “Ginni Thomas was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election using the independent state legislature theory—central to a SCOTUS case that could let extremist state legislatures pick the president. Clarence Thomas heard the case today and—you guessed it—endorsed the theory.”
Earlier this year, Thomas faced similar calls for his impeachment by Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, and Representative Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat. The two worked in tandem with the group MoveOn to seek the justice’s removal from the bench over his wife’s texts to Meadows regarding the 2020 election.
Bowman tweeted in late July: “Thank you so much @Moveon for leading 1.2 million people along with @ilhanMN and I to demand Justice Thomas be impeached. He fails to recuse himself from cases regarding Jan 6th and his wife. He must be impeached.”
