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In the wake of a newly published New York Times story looking at the political connections between Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, the conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, some commentators on social media are calling for an investigation of the longtime justice.
Others are saying he should already be impeached or forced to resign.
The New York Times
NYT,
story details how Ginni Thomas has stood by her husband’s side since his appointment to court in 1991 — to the point of asking Anita Hill, the woman who came forward and accused Clarence Thomas of sexual misconduct and put his nomination in jeopardy, to apologize.
But perhaps more significantly, it details how Ginni Thomas has risen through the conservative ranks and was a key person in the movement to keep Donald Trump as president in light of claims, including those by Trump, that the 2020 election was riddled by fraud. Claims that most election-tracking groups and state election bodies have disputed.
The Times story points to how Ginni Thomas gained access to Trump in part through her husband. And it raises the question of how Clarence Thomas can stay impartial as a jurist with his wife being so active politically. While Thomas is considered a key part of the court’s conservative bloc, the Times nevertheless notes that justices “do not want to be perceived as partisan.”
The Times’ story noted that the “spectacle of a Supreme Court justice’s spouse taking to Facebook
FB,
to champion the attempt of a defeated president to stay in power, as Ginni Thomas did on the morning of Jan. 6, crossed a line for several people in the Thomases’ circle.”
All this has already sparked much discussion — and those calls for an investigation of the well-connected couple.
And, yes, some are already calling for the justice to be impeached or forced to resign.
The Times story also was a hot topic on the ABC show, “The View.” Sunny Hostin, one of the hosts, said that Clarence Thomas is “slicing it pretty thin” in not recusing himself from Supreme Court cases that may touch upon political issues with which his wife has ties.
The Times story noted that Ginni Thomas has said she and her husband operate in “separate professional lanes.” Neither Ginni nor Clarence Thomas spoke with the Times for the piece. Nor did they respond immediately to requests for comment from MarketWatch.
The Times reported that Ginni Thomas commented on a private Facebook group for her high-school classmates in response to the fact some may have been contacted for the story. She said the reporter “seems to have been told to write a hit piece.” (Two reporters, Danny Hakim and Jo Becker, wrote the story, which is already online and is scheduled to appear in print this Sunday, as the cover piece of the newspaper’s magazine.)
Officials with the New York Times didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment from MarketWatch.
The Times isn’t the first publication to delve into the political ties between Clarence and Ginni Thomas, however. As recently as last month, The New Yorker magazine reported on the couple with a story that asked, “Is Ginni Thomas a threat to the Supreme Court?” The Washington Post also looked at Ginni Thomas’s involvement in the election advocacy for Trump.
