Democrats call on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from January 6 Supreme Court cases

Washington — A bicameral group of Democrats are calling on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from future cases that come before the high court involving the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and explain why he failed to step aside from earlier court fights involving the attack and efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Two dozen House and Senate Democrats, including members of the Judiciary Committees in both chambers, made the request in a letter sent Monday to Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts. The group said recent revelations from the Washington Post and CBS News of text messages Thomas' wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, exchanged with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows regarding the 2020 presidential election "raise serious questions" about Thomas' participation in the earlier cases given the potential conflicts of interest.

"[G]iven the recent disclosures about Ms. Thomas's efforts to overturn the election and her specific communications with White House officials about doing so, Justice Thomas's participation in cases involving the 2020 election and the January 6th attack is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with federal ethics requirements," wrote the Democrats, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington. Other signatories included House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York and Senate Judiciary subcommittee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Twenty-nine text messages obtained by CBS News and the Washington Post show Ginni Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, pressured Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and keep former President Donald Trump in office. In some of the messages, Ginni Thomas indicated she believed the election was stolen, and shared with Meadows baseless theories circulated online about President Biden and ballot fraud.

In one missive sent to Meadows on November 10, three days after Mr. Biden was projected the winner of the presidential election, Ginni Thomas claimed Democrats were attempting the "greatest Heist of our History." 

The 29 text messages were among the more than 2,300 Meadows provided to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

Public disclosure of the text messages has prompted scrutiny of Thomas' participation in cases that came before the Supreme Court involving the 2020 presidential election and a bid by Trump to keep his White House records from House investigators examining the Capitol assault. The high court rejected several long-shot efforts to overturn election results in battleground states and declined Trump's request to block the release of his documents. 

But in the dispute between Trump and the January 6 committee, Thomas was the lone justice to note his dissent, though he did not provide an explanation as to why he would have stopped the release of Trump's records.

He, along with Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, also dissented from a February 2021 decision by the court not to hear a pair of challenges to Pennsylvania's election rules from Trump and his allies. Thomas wrote that turning away the cases invites "further confusion and erosion of voter confidence."

Ginni Thomas told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview she was "disappointed and frustrated" there was violence on January 6 and declined playing any role with those who planned and led the events. She also her husband "doesn't discuss his work with me, and I don't involve him in my work."

But in their letter to Thomas and Roberts, the 24 Democrats asked the 30-year veteran of the high court to provide an explanation as to why he decided not to recuse himself from the cases and called on the chief justice to commit to creating a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court no later than April 28.

While there is a code of ethics for the federal judiciary, it does not apply to Supreme Court justices. Additionally, though federal law dictates when a judge should step aside from proceedings, such decisions typically are to the discretion of each Supreme Court justice.

"As Congress considers its response to these latest revelations involving Justice Thomas's potential violations of ethics laws, the Supreme Court has the responsibility and the power to act now," the Democrats wrote, adding that "Chief Justice Roberts has often spoken about the importance of the Supreme Court's 'credibility and legitimacy as an institution.' That trust, already at all-time lows with the American public, must be earned."