High Court Hypocrisy
Ginnie And Clarence Perfect Together
Of course, Virginia “Ginnie” Thomas is allowed to have her opinions and to live the way she wants but things are different when your husband is Clarence Thomas, the senior member of the Supreme Court, the highest decider in the nation.
And just because you are the wife of a Supreme Court Justice, it doesn’t mean that you can’t take part in opposing the government but that doesn’t mean you can use your very special connections in government to gain access to the highest levels of government, including the president of the United States.
Ginny sent dozens of texts following trump’s defeat in 2020 to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, urging him to pursue bogus challenges to keep trump in office and overturn President Biden’s victory. She egged on Meadows to urge trump to hang in and not give in to a Biden victory because the “Biden crime family” was in the process of being arrested and sent to Guantánamo Bay for “ballot fraud.” Of course, as we all know, less than a month later, juiced up with the incendiary incitement of their leader, trumpers stormed the Capitol with deadly and costly results. The texts were released last week by the bi-partisan congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks. Wow.
The news isn’t that Ginny is a right wing nutjob, the news is that she had the ear of the chief of staff to the president of the United States in urging that the rules of democracy be ignored so that trump could remain in charge and rescue the country from left wing, Democratic Marxists. Her texts came days before trumpers stormed the Capitol, killing, maiming and destroying. Double wow.
And that isn’t the really big news. The big news would be that Ginny’s actions present a clear conflict of interest for Clarence and that he should recuse himself from sitting on cases that involve trump, the election or any related issues. And as is typical of Clarence, he hasn’t recused or even commented and the likelihood is that he never will do either. But that doesn’t make him right. Wow, wow, wow.
In other words:
Politics 101: The appearance of a conflict of interest is as damaging as an actual conflict.
Politics102: If it barks like a dog, bites like a dog, has fleas llike a dog, it most likely is not a duck.
Politics 103: Do as I say not as I do.
Politics 104: If we lose faith in the Supreme Court as an objective branch of the government, that the justices will decide cases on the merits and not on their own personal interest, if that happens, we have dynamited yet a key plank in our democracy.
Ginny has said there is no conflict of interest for her husband. Last week, Ginny told The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, that she and her husband kept their professional lives separate.
“Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me,” she said, “and I don’t involve him in my work.”
But a longtime friend of Ginny and Clarence had a different take on the relationship.
“The one person he really listens to is Virginia,” a longtime friend told The Washington Post in 1991. “He depends on her for advice.”
Two seemingly contradictory statements and they can’t both be true. Take your pick but I assume that Clarence goes to Ginny for advice unless they sleep in separate beds in separate homes in separate towns. Even if you believe Ginny’s version of reality, it doesn’t let Clarence off the hook because federal law requires Supreme Court justices to inquire about their wive’s activities and in the words of one expert, “Conscious avoidance of knowledge is knowledge.” It’s kind of like making no decision is a decision.
Federal law requires that “any justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” A reasonable person could easily infer that Clarence’s impartiality might be tainted because of the influence of his batwing wife.
The law also says the judges should not participate in cases in which a spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.” I would say, judging by Ginny’s inflammatory opinions as reflected in the texts, that she would be “substantially affected” if her hubby joins in ruling against trump or fellow trumpers.
But, but, but, the longest word in the English language. But the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, over which there are no other courts, has left recusal and conflict decisions up to the justice in question and not his or her colleagues. That is because the wise and all-knowing justices don’t want to be in the middle of nasty recusal arguments because that would sully the professionalism of the high court. And they don’t like justices who recuse because that cuts down the number of justices to hear the case. In lower courts, a judge who recuses is replaced by another judge but it doesn’t work that way with the Supreme Court.
And that puts the lie to a principle spanning both Roman law and English common law, “nemo iudex in causa sua,” meaning “no man should be a judge in his own case.” So we have to trust that the justices will toe the line and recuse in conflict situations. Funnily, a sweeping Wall Street Journal investigation found that last fall that at least 131 federal judges violated the law by hearing cases in which they had a financial interest in one of the parties. They were naughty in not admitting a conflict and stepping away. So much for trusting the justices.
So who is this Ginny? She has a long history of far right wing agitations, most recently as member of CNP (Council for National Policy) Action, a group that helped advance the “Stop the Steal” movement. She even attended the Jan. 6 rally that led to the Capitol storming before Congress confirmed Biden’s victory but said she left before trump fired up the crowd. That’s like one of Jesus’ disciples leaving before Jesus finished a speech.
Those texts by Ginny include, “Do not concede,” “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!,” “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History” and “It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.” In texts, she also urged that wacko, conspiracy theorist, attorney Sidney Powell be retained by the trump efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Ginny, 65, a native of Nebraska, has a law degree from Creighton University, a private, Jesuit university in Omaha, Neb. She married Clarence in 1987 and in 2000, she joined the conservative, Heritage Foundation, then, in 2009, she started Liberty Central, a conservative political advocacy nonprofit associated with the Tea Party movement. In 1991, she began work for the Legislative Affairs Office of the U.S. Department of Labor where she argued against comparable-worth legislation that would have mandated equal pay for women and men in jobs deemed to be comparable.
In 1991, Clarence was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to fill the open seat on the Supreme Court left by the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African American justice. Clarence is the senior associate justice, the longest-serving member of the court, with a tenure of 30 years, 154 days as of March 26. Ginny attended her hubby’s contentious U.S. Senate confirmation hearings and stood by him as he was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, a lawyer with the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) during Clarence’s tenure as EEOC chair.
Hill claimed that Thomas made multiple sexual and romantic overtures to her despite her repeatedly telling him to stop. Thomas and his supporters argued with great anger, fury and indignation that Hill fabricated the allegations to prevent the appointment of a black conservative to the court.
Ginny endorsed Ted Cruz in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries and then backed trump after he won the nomination. All the while she made controversial media posts, that the Washington Post deemed to be “nakedly partisan, erroneous propaganda.”
Wow. Wow. Wow.