Dems Makes URGENT DEMAND to Clarence Thomas in Trump Case
MeidasTouch
Jan 7, 2024
Justice Clarence Thomas will obtain more money if Trump is re-elected from his wife’s right wing MAGA consulting and lobbying firms, and that combined with his wife’s key role in organizing the Jan6 insurrection disqualifies Thomas from presiding over Trump-related cases. Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on a new demand by House Democrats that Thomas recuse himself from all things Trump and the ballot banning cases, or else.
Transcript
this is Michael popok legal AF let me
lead off with a quote from a new letter
prepared by leaders of the house
addressed to Clarence Thomas encouraging
Clarence Thomas to abide by the new code
of conduct of the Supreme Court and step
off the bench on anything related to
Donald Trump and especially those cases
like Colorado coming up before him now
on appeal as to whether Donald Trump
should be on the ballot or not and this
is how the letter ends I'm going to
start my hot take with it quote fewer
than half of all Americans trust the
Supreme Court and that number will fall
even lower if you Clarence Thomas rule
in this case that's how the letter ends
I'm going to talk to you about where we
are with it why it's so important
important for us to shine a CLE light on
Clarence Thomas and His ethical his
being ethically challenged and
compromised and how that impacts our
justice system there's no other way to
put this the relationship between
Clarence Thomas and his wife Jenny
Thomas a wife of 36 years
is such that the household of the
Thomases is financially benefited
benefiting from her close relationship
with Donald Trump from her leading Maga
right-wing not for-profit consultancies
and other organizations to support
Donald Trump's uh legal and political
and policy decisions she made tons of
money for her and for her husband when
Donald Trump was in office she's in she
is incentivized to try to get him back
into office in order to help the family
financially that alone is a
disqualifying event for Clarence Thomas
that he's going to benefit from some
business at the court and you also have
the fact that Jenny Thomas is not just a
an accidental witness to the Jan 6th
Insurrection she was the party planner
and wedding planner she was the
organizer for bringing people to the
capital that ultimately led to the riots
that were encouraged by Donald Trump
right her foundations raised money to
bust people in to participate at in what
became the Insurrection so she's not
just a passive drive by hey I wonder
what's going on over there on the on the
mall she knows what was going on in the
mall and then leading up to Jan 6 she
from the from the uh day after the
election all the way up to right before
Jan 6 she was a fervent supporter of
Donald Trump and trying to promote the
stop the steel uh arguments texting
incessantly Mark Meadows the chief of
staff now an indicted co-conspirator
to get him to overturn the will of the
people election officials and elected
officials dozens and dozens of text
messages have been revealed by Jenny
Thomas and she testified to the Jan 6
committee the report of the Jan 6
committee all 300 and something pages is
the foundational evidence for both the
Secretary of State and the Colorado
Supreme Court Justices ultimately
through the trial court level the basis
to find that Donald Trump was an
insurrectionist Andor committed
Rebellion against the Constitution
leading to him being banned on the 14th
Amendment article 3 she's she was she
testified not she testified she tried to
remove Liz Cheney and Adam kininger uh
kininger from being on the
panel in the early stages so jinny
Thomas who's benefiting financially
therefore Clarence Thomas is benefiting
financially who who has uh who is a
witness related to Donald Trump's
insurrectionist and rebellious Behavior
who was the party planner wedding
planner if you will for Jan 6th right
and and the Jan 6 report being this
important of a piece of evidence that's
being used by judges and by Secretary of
States to ban Donald Trump how could how
can Clarence Thomas even think that he
could satisfy the conditions of the new
code of conduct that the Supreme Court
just passed but is self- policing not
only self- policing each judge each
justice has to make the decision for
themselves there's no motion to
disqualify that we can file some people
might be thinking why don't they file a
motion to disqualify like at the trial
court level because there is no
equivalent at the United States Supreme
Court level because they didn't adopt a
policing mechanism within their own code
of conduct to let litigants let alone
average citizens move to disqualify a
Justice it's up to the Justice's own
conscience to make the decision whether
the the um the factors uh apply and he
should be disqualified or accuse himself
good
luck but what do we have we got a new
letter that's right from senior leaders
of the uh Democratic party in the house
led by Hank Johnson these are all
Congress people uh AOC and Dan Goldman
who's one of the managers of Donald
Trump's impeachment along with several
others who've written a very strong and
pointed letter not to Clarence not to
Clarence Thomas's boss not to John
Roberts the chief justice but right to
Clarence Thomas associate
Justice and here's what it says I'm
going to read you the the the really
important
parts uh dear Justice Thomas on December
15 2023 we wrote imploring that you
recuse yourself that means Step Off the
Bench from any participation in the case
of US versus Trump that's the main
underlying Jack Smith special counsel
case in the District of Columbia given
your wife's intimate involvement in Mr
Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the
2020
election um more particularly they refer
to jinny Thomas's substantial
involvement in the events leading up to
Jan 6's Insurrection and the financial
incentive it it preent it presents to
your household if Trump is reelected all
of these things being disqualifying they
then walk through the actual code of
conduct that we're now uh we're now
waiting around for Clarence Thomas to uh
decide whether it applies to him or not
in Canon
3B that provision of the code of conduct
it states that quote a Justice should
disqualify himself or herself in a
proceeding in which the Justice's
impartiality might be reasonably
questioned where that is where an
unbiased and reasonable person who is
aware of all relevant circumstances
would doubt that the Justice could
fairly discharge his or her duties the
code details such instances including
those in which the Justice knows that
the Justice or the Justice's spouse has
a financial interest in the subject
matter in controversy or in a party to
the proceeding Trump or any other
interest that could be affected
substantially by the outcome of the
proceeding and that's the framework and
then they go off and tell Clarence
Thomas exactly how those how those
factors here have been implicated and he
should disqualify himself so they start
with her testimony before the Jan 6
Committee just to remind everybody or
those that didn't know when when Jenny
Thomas was uh summoned to testify before
the house Chan 6 committee your wife
told the committee this is the letter
back to Thomas that she attended the Jan
6 stop the steel rally where Mr Trump
jined up the attendees into a mob
whipped them
up but what she left out is that she was
instrumental in planning it bringing the
insurrectionist to the capital your wife
was one of nine board members for a
conservative political group that helped
lead to stop the steel movement a
movement which culminated in the Jan 6
attack that the Colorado Supreme Court
deemed an Insurrection it is
Unthinkable it is Unthinkable that you
could be impartial in deciding whether
an event your wife personally organized
qualifies as an Insurrection that would
prevent someone from holding the office
of President just think about that for a
minute she not only organized it she was
paid to organize it so there's part of
the financial incentive that we talked
about she's not just a witness to the
Jan 6 um uh Rally or on the ellipse she
organizes it and then it goes on to say
on page two of the letter furthermore
your wife of 36 years Miss Thomas has
shown a fervent interest in or bias in
favor of Mr
Trump um she urged Mr Trump's Chief of
Staff the indicted Mark Meadows to
pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn
the 2020 presidential election with
dozens of text messages starting
immediately after election day and
ending only days after the Jan 6th
attack on the US capital not before
she's still texting him after the
Insurrection she also signed a letter
urging then minority leader McCarthy to
remove Adam K kininger and Liz Cheney
from the Jan 6 committee that is the
foundational basis of having Donald
Trump removed from the ballot Miss
Thomas was a witness due to her intimate
involvement and that committee's report
is integral to the case and now they hit
Clarence and Jenny Thomas where they
live in their pocketbook this is the
same group of people that have taken
millions of dollars of lavish trips from
right-wing Maga uh extremists who have
business before the court who have sold
and participated real estate
transactions with right-wing Maga people
or people who have business before the
court who have accepted Gifts of tuition
for nephews from people who have
business before the court who have filed
Amicus or friends of the court brief or
actually are litigants before the court
so they've never seen a
um a financial incentive that they
haven't ignored they've never seen one
that was worth disqualifying them and
since the Supreme Court back where I the
code of conduct has made this self-
policing there is no way to file a
motion to disqualify or recuse a United
States Supreme Court member you can at
the trial court level there is a process
for the litigants the parties based on
the facts in the law to disqualify a
trial judge you can't do it at the
Supreme Court level even the chief judge
chief justice Roberts can't go to
Clarence Thomas and tap him on the
shoulder and say you're out Clarence
we're going with eight on this one
you're code of conduct has been violated
we have to leave it to the person who
actually is the person charged with um
violating the code of conduct to decide
whether he has violated the code of
conduct how ludicrous um it's not even
self- policing it's it's Justice by
Justice policing with no alternative or
appeal
process so they hit him where they live
financially
finally it is foreseeable on the bottom
of page two of the letter that your
wife's earning capacity will be
positively impacted should the court
Grant the relief sought by the former
president in other words put him back on
the ballot and help him become president
again they then outline that before
Trump was President her consultancy at
an entity called Liberty Consulting made
up to less than $115,000 after he was
elected to try to file briefs and do
lobbying to help his uh Trump's policy
policies like the Muslim ban and things
related to covid it skyrocketed to up to
$250,000 uh Miss Thomas's professional
and financial interests the letter goes
on to say are aligned with Mr Trump
becoming president again and should he
be reelected it is likely that your
wife's income will be favorably impacted
your wife's income benefits your
household Therefore your family and by
extension you personally you Clarence
Thomas have a financial stake in the
outcome of this case which disqualifies
you from any involvement in it to
protect this is how the letter ends to
protect the Court's Integrity whatever's
left of it and the legitimacy of its
decision in this Monumental case you sir
must recuse yourself now we'll have to
sit back and watch it's up to Clarence
Thomas again it can only be where we do
a pressure campaign as led by the
Democrats in the house and the Senate
and by the midest touch network and on
legal AF where we shine the CLE light on
it and we don't let up with a ention or
pressure until he relents and if he
doesn't relent then we can call out the
United States Supreme Court and for the
illegitimate process by which they
render their decisions related to Donald
Trump can't ignore it they want to bury
their heads in the sand we can't we
don't have that luxury when our
constitutional republic and Liberty is
hanging by a thread in the balance
that's why we do hot takes like this
that's why we do legal AF at the
intersection of law politics and justice
to bring it to you to call out justices
that are conflicted to call out Donald
Trump when he takes inconsistent
positions in briefs hoping nobody will
notice we notice Jack Smith notices
prosecutors notices attorney general's
notice and judges notice and the public
at large who's going to make up that
jury notice and we're going to help
bring it to their attention one place on
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reporting thanks so much for watching
******************************
Congress of the United States
Washington, DC 20515
December 15, 2023
The Honorable Clarence Thomas
Associate Justice
Supreme Court of the United States
1 First Street NE
Washington, DC 20543
Dear Justice Thomas,
This week, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide a key question in the case of United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, a case in which Mr. Trump is charged with conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, conspiring to obstruct the certification of the electoral vote, and actually obstructing the certification of the electoral vote.1 In this week’s filing, Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to grant certiorari to decide “Whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”2 The Supreme Court has directed Mr. Trump to file a response to the request for certiorari.3 For the reasons explained below, we strongly implore you to exercise your discretion and recuse yourself from this and any other decisions in the case of United States v. Trump.
Faith in the Supreme Court has plummeted, and fewer than half of all Americans trust the Supreme Court.4 Public perception is growing that the Supreme Court flouts the rules, in large part due to your recently reported ties to and luxury travel with billionaire Republican donors that you hid for decades.5 The public pressure has grown so intense, that last month the Supreme Court announced a formal—though unenforceable—Code of Conduct.6 You signed the Code, publicly proclaiming that you subscribe to it. In Cannon 3B, the Code states that “A Justice should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.”7 The Code details such instances, including those in which “The Justice or Justice’s spouse…is known by the Justice:…(iii) to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding; or (iv) likely to be a material witness in the proceeding.”8
We know through public reporting and through Congressional investigations that your wife, Virginia (“Ginni”) Thomas was intimately involved in Mr. Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and to obstruct its certification – the very conspiracies at issue in this case. Your wife not only attended the pro-Trump rally that preceded the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, she was one of nine board members for a conservative political group that helped lead the “Stop the Steal” movement.9 She traded at least 29 text messages with Mr. Trump’s Chief of Staff (Mark Meadows) in which she urged him to “pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” starting immediately after Election Day 2020 and ending only days after the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.10 In these text messages, your wife pleaded with Mr. Meadows to continue the fight to overturn the election results, calling the election a “heist” and saying in one message: “Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”11 Your wife also pressed Arizona and Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn President Biden’s 2020 victory, urging them to set aside President Biden’s popular-vote victory and to choose their own presidential electors, despite state law to the contrary.12 These details about your wife’s activities raise serious questions about your ability to be or even to appear impartial in any cases before the Supreme Court involving the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection.
If you want to show the American people that the Supreme Court’s recent Code of Conduct is worth more than the paper it is written on, you must do the honorable thing and recuse yourself from any decisions in the case of United States v. Trump.
Sincerely,
Henry C. "Hank" Johnson, Jr.
Member of Congress
Jamie Raskin
Member of Congress
Madeleine Dean
Member of Congress
Sheila Jackson Lee
Member of Congress
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Member of Congress
Gerald E. Connolly
Member of Congress
Dan Goldman
Member of Congress
Jasmine Crockett
Member of Congress
_______________
Notes:
1 Indictment, United States v. Trump, (D.D.C. Aug 01, 2023), available at: https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Tr ... cr_257.pdf.
2 Petition for Writ of Certiorari, United States v. Trump, __U.S. __ (2023), available at: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/ ... Donald%20J. %20Trump%20Petition.pdf.
3 ABC News, “Supreme Court will consider special counsel’s request to rule on Trump’s immunity in Jan. 6 case,” Katherine Faulders and Alexander Mallin, December 11, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/special-couns ... limmunity/ story?id=105556211.
4 Gallup, “Approval of U.S. Supreme Court Down to 40%, a New Low,” Jeffrey M. Jones, September 23, 2021, https://news.gallup.com/poll/354908/app ... w-low.aspx.
5 See collection of 2023 stories at ProPublica, “Friends of the Court: SCOTUS Justices’ Beneficial Relationships with Billionaire Donors, https://www.propublica.org/series/supreme-court-scotus.
6 ABC News, “Under ethics pressure, Supreme Court announces it’s adopting code of conduct,” Devin Dwyer, November 12, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ethics- ... 104856337; U.S. Supreme Court, Code of Conduct for Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, available at: https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/Code ... 3_2023.pdf.
7 Code of Conduct for Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, Cannon 3B(2).
8 Id. Cannon 3B(2)(d).
9 CNN Politics: “January 6 committee has text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows, Ryan Nobles, Annie Grayer, Zachary Cohen, and Jamie Gangel, March 25, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics ... tmessages/ index.html; New York Times, “The Long Crusade of Clarence and Ginni Thomas,” Danny Hakim and Jo Becker, February 22, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/maga ... homas.html.
10 Washington Post, “Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show,” Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, March 24, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ows-texts; CBS News, “Ginni Thomas, Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, exchanged texts with Mark Meadows about efforts to overturn the 2020 election,” March 24, 2022, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ginni-thom ... n-overturn.
11 CNN Politics: “January 6 committee has text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows, Ryan Nobles, Annie Grayer, Zachary Cohen, and Jamie Gangel, March 25, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics ... tmessages/ index.html
12 Washington Post, “Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory,” Emma Brown, September 1, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/investig ... r-tauchen/.