Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was released from a hospital where he had been treated for an unidentified illness for about a week.
The 73-year-old, who is the country’s longest-serving and currently the only Black Supreme Court justice, was being treated for flu-like symptoms at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., according to CNN.
Thomas’ hospitalization came at an interesting time. He missed at least three days of oral arguments on cases before the Supreme Court, while at the same time, the Senate held confirmation hearings on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, who could soon join him as the court’s second Black justice and first Black woman.
His stay in the hospital also coincided with news that broke about his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist who was revealed to have not only attended the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, rally that ended in an insurrectionist riot but also her close communications with ex-president Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, who was actively spewing false information about the 2020 election.
In 29 emails obtained by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, Ginni Thomas encouraged Mark Meadows to keep up his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s win over Trump, for which there was no legal basis. Trump was impeached in the House but acquitted by a Republican-controlled Senate for his actions in inciting the riot. Ginni Thomas has said that she doesn’t talk about her political activism with her husband, who was nominated by Republican president George H.W. Bush and is one of the most conservative justices on the court.
But there are now calls for a deeper investigation into Ginni Thomas’ role in possibly organizing the Jan. 6 riot and into what, if anything, Clarence Thomas knew about it.