The story goes on under the ad “Help this Great President stand firm, Mark !!!” Ginny Thomas texted Meadows in November, days after the election. “… You are the leader, with him, defending America’s constitutional government on the precipice. “The majority know Biden and the Left is attempting the biggest robbery in our history.” Democrats in the Capitol said they were outraged by the messages and the involvement of Judge Thomas in some of the cases related to the Supreme Court election, none of which were ruled in Trump’s favor. One of the strongest reactions came from Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). “Judge Thomas’s conduct in the Supreme Court appears to be increasingly corrupt,” Wyden said in a press release. “Judges are obliged to resign when their involvement in a case would even create a conflict of interest. “A person with an ounce of common sense could see that the bar is here.” The story goes on under the ad Legal ethicists, even some who have previously liked the idea that judges’ spouses are entitled to their own political activities, have said the revelations are a serious problem for the Supreme Court. “The public will be deeply concerned if justice can be done when his wife has been so active in challenging the outcome of the election,” said Steven Lubet, a professor of legal ethics at Northwestern University Law School. Louis J. Virelli III, a law professor at Stetson University who wrote “Disqualifying the High Court: Supreme Court Recusal and the Constitution,” said “this situation is problematic” in view of the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. against hundreds of Trump supporters. The story goes on under the ad “It’s so intense. “You have the wife of a Supreme Court judge who is essentially supporting a revolt over an issue that, at least in part, could end up in court,” he said. “This is quite dramatic.” Congressional Republicans defended Clarence Thomas. “Justice Thomas is a great American and an excellent judge,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Said in a statement. “I have full confidence in his brilliance and impartiality in every aspect of the Court’s work.” In the House of Representatives in Florida’s retreat, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (California) said Thomas should not automatically resign from any Jan. 6 case. “I think Judge Thomas could make his decisions like any other time – it’s his decision based on the law,” McCarthy said. “If you have spent time studying the justice of the Supreme Court, he is the one who studies properly.” The story goes on under the ad Lawmaker Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) – who said McCarthy would become chairman of the House Justice Committee if Republicans regain a majority in this year’s midterm elections – said he agreed “absolutely” with McCarthy’s assessment. Both men disagreed with the congressional committee investigating the Capitol uprising – each speaking to Trump that day. Adam White, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which focuses on the Supreme Court, said previous criticisms of Genie Thomas’s political work, as well as calls for justice to be withdrawn from litigation, were generally overrated and unfair. . She should be allowed to have her own career, White and others thought. The story goes on under the ad However, he said, the recent revelations are “somewhat different because they relate to a specific course of events that led to lawsuits in the Supreme Court.” “This raises real questions about the need for Judge Thomas to withdraw from future cases related to the January 6 uprising,” White said. Ginny Thomas’s text messages, which do not directly refer to her husband or to the Supreme Court, show her access to Trump’s inner circle to advance her efforts to guide the president’s strategy of overturning the election results. Meadows said in response that she was grateful she received her advice. Thomas has publicly denied any conflict of interest between her activism and her husband’s work in the Supreme Court. “Clarence does not discuss his work with me and I do not involve him in my work,” she told the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, in an article published on March 14. The story goes on under the ad In February 2021, when the Supreme Court dismissed Trump ally appeals in the election process, Judge Thomas wrote in a dispute that he was “confused” and “inexplicable” that the majority would not hear the cases in order to provide the states with guidance for future elections. In January, he was the only judge to disagree when the court rejected Trump’s request to block the National Archives from sending documents to the White House requested by the House committee as part of its investigation. The text messages revealed Thursday did not come from those documents, but were delivered to the committee by Meadows before he stopped working with her. Thomas “did not explain his reasoning” in the case in which he stated that he would have granted Trump’s request, Senator Tim Kane (D-Va.) Wrote on Twitter on Friday. “We need answers.” Steven Gillers, an ethics expert at New York University Law School, said Judge Thomas had an obligation under the discharge law to know about his wife’s activities. She can not claim to be ignorant of her work, Gillers said, nor deliberately avoid being informed of her actions. The story goes on under the ad “His job was to ensure that the public would not question his impartiality” in cases involving the 2020 election and the congressional inquiry into the Capitol attack, Guilers said. “The public would suspect that Thomas was talking about the post-election challenge.” Gabe Roth of the Fix the Court’s monitoring team said Judge Thomas’s continued involvement in election-related cases would “further tarnish the court’s already weakened public image”. “Judge Thomas must withdraw from any Supreme Court cases or petitions related to the January 6 Commission or attempts to overthrow the election,” he said. Virelli said he would not go that far. The story goes on under the ad “If any future cases involve any communication from Ginny Thomas as evidence or involve her as a witness, all of these things should require immediate acquittal from Judge Thomas and I think that is a fairly simple question,” he said. “It gets more complicated when you take a step back to a level.” For example, he said he did not believe a case involving the prosecution of someone who invaded the Capitol on January 6 would require acquittal. Amanda Frost, a professor and forensic ethics expert at the American University School of Law, said the court should implement a new system for judges to review each other’s acquittals and ask them to explain their decisions. to the audience. If the court can not be policed, he said, “Congress must intervene to protect the integrity, legitimacy and reputation of the court.” Last month, dozens of forensic experts sent to Supreme Court Justice John G. Roberts Jr. a letter renewing a request for a code of conduct specifically to the Supreme Court. They noted that three years ago, Judge Elena Kagan told a congressional committee that judges “were considering whether there should be a Code of Judicial Conduct that only applies to the United States Supreme Court” and that “it is something that is being taken very seriously. “ But since then there has been nothing on the subject. “We prefer the Supreme Court to draft a Code of Conduct and to avoid the serious questions that could arise if Congress imposed one,” the letter said. Roberts in his message for the end of the year on the state of the judiciary said that such decisions should be made only by this department. Judges are reluctant to criticize each other and are equal in court in making their own decisions. Roberts has no power to force change. But Roth said that because the judge sees himself as the main custodian of the court’s public image, he should take advantage of his position by speaking openly. Roberts did not answer a question about Thomas’s condition or code of conduct, nor did Thomas comment. Thomas was released from Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington on Friday morning after staying for almost a week to treat an infection, the court’s press office said. Thomas, 73, was admitted on March 18, complaining of flu symptoms. The court said in a press release on Sunday night that he had been diagnosed with an infection and was being treated with intravenous antibiotics. A court spokesman said Thomas had been vaccinated and boosted against coronavirus and that his illness was not related to Covid-19. Thomas is the longest-serving member of the tribunal, elected in 1991 by President George W. Bush. He is also the second oldest judge after 83-year-old Stephen G. Breyer, who plans to retire at the end of his term. Judges decide for themselves how much health information they will share with the public, and there was no additional guidance from Sunday until the Supreme Court’s Public Information Officer, Patricia McCabe, on Friday. “Justice Thomas was discharged from the hospital earlier today,” she told reporters in an email. There was no indication if Thomas would meet his colleagues on the bench again …
