Looks like Clarence Thomas’ wife is not only in support of the asshat-in-chief but actually sent out an email on a conservative Listserv trying to mobilize support around his policies.
“What is the best way to, with minimal costs, set up a daily text capacity for a ground up-grassroots army for pro-Trump daily action items to push back against the left’s resistance efforts who are trying to make America ungovernable?” Virgina “Ginni” Thomas wrote on Feb. 13, according to information obtained by the Daily Beast.
“I see the left has Daily Action @YourDailyAction and their Facebook likes are up to 61K,” she continued, linking to a Washington Post story.
Daily Action encourages those who oppose Asshat to make daily calls to their local congressmen to complain about Asshat’s agenda.
“But there are some grassroots activists, who seem beyond the Republican party or the conservative movement, who wish to join the fray on social media for Trump and link shields and build momentum,” Ginni Thomas wrote. “I met with a house load of them yesterday and we want a daily textable tool to start… Suggestions?”
Now, how this situation really gets sticky is that Asshat’s Muslim ban may end up before the Supreme Court soon, and while Ginni Thomas’ husband, Justice Clarence Thomas, doesn’t speak much, he does vote.
Legal experts told the Daily Beast that if Justice Department lawyers decide to appeal a 9th U.S. Circuit Court ruling that upheld a previous judge’s decision opposing the ban, the case could be moved to the Supreme Court, and that could pose problems for Clarence Thomas, including potentially having lawyers ask that he remove himself from the case.
“You can imagine circumstances easily where such conduct on the part of the spouse of a Supreme Court justice would lead to a nonfrivolous disqualification motion,” Heidi Li Feldman, a professor at Georgetown Law School and an expert on legal ethics, told the Daily Beast.
Feldman added that while spouses aren’t banned from engaging in politics, the difference here is that Ginni Thomas seems to be mobilizing efforts for a specific case (read: Muslim ban) coming before the Supreme Court.
“It’s pretty egregious,” Feldman told the Daily Beast. “It’s pretty clear that it’s quite partisan, and in context, given the date of the email and that the tool is meant to rebut activity on the left—what has the left been really active on? The executive orders. So, minimally, I would say the author of the email is thinking of that executive action.
“It’s so specific, it’s so narrowly tailored,” she added. “I was taken aback.”
The really messed-up part is that if Clarence Thomas deems himself fit to be impartial when deciding on the case, he can’t be forced to recuse himself, since there is no governing body to force him off a case.
The Daily Beast notes that this wouldn’t be the first time Justice Thomas found himself in a sticky situation in which he needed to decide if he could be impartial.
In 1996, Thomas recused himself from United States v. Virginia because the case involved enrollment at the Virginia Military Institute. Thomas’ son was attending the institute at the time of the case.
“More recently, though, Thomas declined to recuse himself from a Supreme Court case on the Affordable Care Act, which his wife vocally opposed,” the Daily Beast reports.
Not everyone thinks Thomas needs to recuse himself from the case regarding the Muslim ban should it come before the Supreme Court.
“It’s an important principle: Just because you’re married to somebody doesn’t mean you share all their views,” Charles Wolfram, a legal ethics expert and emeritus law professor at Cornell, told the Daily Beast.
However, he added: “As a matter of common sense, it seems to me it’s just silly for [Ginni Thomas] to be emailing in this fashion.”
Read more at the Daily Beast.