After the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack subpoenaed White House materials, Donald Trump sued to keep the documents from his administration hidden. The former president ran out of options, however, two months ago: The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Republican’s emergency appeal, clearing the way for disclosure.
While the high court did not release details on each justice’s conclusion, Justice Clarence Thomas was alone in publicly acknowledging his dissent.
It’s against this backdrop that the conservative justice’s wife admitted that she attended the pre-riot “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. The New York Times reported:
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, said in an interview published on Monday that she attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally at the Ellipse in Washington. The interview appeared in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, and followed a New York Times Magazine article last month that examined the political and personal history of both Ms. Thomas and her husband, including her role in efforts to overturn the presidential election.
Ginni Thomas’ efforts on Jan. 6 have been the subject of quite a bit of scrutiny lately. Separate reports in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine described the longtime far-right activist as playing an organizing role in the pro-Trump gathering just south of the White House. Neither article, however, said Thomas actually attended the pro-Trump rally.
This week, however, she turned to a conservative outlet to concede — one year, two months, one week, and one day later — that she did show up in person for the anti-election gathering. Thomas claims, however, that she got cold, left early, and did not hear the then-president’s speech.
She also claims to have “played no role with those who were planning and leading the January 6 events.”
Thomas’ acknowledgements are the latest in a series of revelations about Thomas, her far-right political activism, and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The Times’ report added that she’s also publicly condemned the bipartisan congressional investigation and co-signed a letter calling for House Republicans to expel Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from the GOP conference because of their efforts to uncover the truth.
Thomas, the Times added, is also a board member for a group called CNP Action, which has helped advance the “Stop the Steal” movement that tried to keep Trump in office, despite his defeat.
In case this isn’t obvious, Ginni Thomas is not just some random person with conservative political beliefs. She is a power player in far-right politics: Jane Mayer’s recent New Yorker piece described a White House meeting, held in the Roosevelt Room a couple of years ago, in which Thomas “pressed Trump to purge his administration of disloyal members of the ‘deep state,’ handing him an enemies list” that she’d helped compile.
The same New Yorker article noted that Thomas works directly with political organizations that have had stakes in cases pending at the Supreme Court. Justices can decide on their own whether to recuse themselves from cases, and Clarence Thomas has chosen not to bother.
Ginni Thomas has traditionally defended her unusual familial circumstances by noting that DC Circuit Court Judge Nina Pillard is married to the ACLU’s national legal director. That’s true. What this fails to note, however, is that Pillard recuses herself from ACLU cases. Clarence Thomas refuses to do the same. Last year, Justice Amy Coney Barrett tried to defend the Supreme Court’s political impartiality — while speaking alongside Mitch McConnell, who rushed her onto the bench during the 2020 presidential election as part of a brazenly political display, and who invited the justice to speak at a University of Louisville center that bears his name. “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” Barrett said in September. Heaven forbid.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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