While I feel a little apprehensive betting against the authoritarianism of the GOP…
I think with the level of control they have over the judiciary I don’t think it benefits them for people to question how legitimate the SCOTUS is. I think we’re a long way away from the court becoming irrelevant but it’s definitely a risk down the road.
I also think while many may not see it, most figures in the GOP and other conservative groups wouldn’t do very well in an actual authoritarian system under a strongman. People like McConnell thrive in a system where there is a rule of law that they can exploit at the right times, not in an openly lawless system where political rivals can just be killed, which is the endgame of an authoritarian path.
Forget about being present at or organizing the actual riot, she is known to have been in close and frequent contact with Mark Meadows at the time when Meadows was actively engaged in a seditious conspiracy to forge electoral certificates. Basic common sense says that she is going to be, at the very least, a person of interest to the investigators, and that the chance she will eventually be indicted is not insignificant.
I agree with all that you have said in addition to this. But nobody is even talking about some future hypothetical case where Ginny Thomas is criminally charges and Clarence is hearing an appeal.
Posters are excoriating him from not recusal himself from a ruling on a motion to grant a temporary stay of a lower court’s ruling pending appeal as to whether ex-President Trump can exert executive privilege at all over his presidential papers regarding January 6, or the alternative question, that even if he could, did his assertion pass muster?
That was the legal question presented. Along with that, there was evidence that Ginny Thomas paid for a bus of protestors to appear in the ellipse on January 6. There was no evidence that she coordinated an attack on the capitol, no evidence that she advocated for it, and no evidence that she was present and assisting, and importantly no evidence that her name would be in anything of Trump’s regarding January 6.
That is thin in the extreme to say that Clarence should have recused himself.
So Clarence’s view lost and the papers were released and confirmed that there is no evidence of any of the above. She texted Meadows previously, no doubt having outsized influence because of who her husband is, and advocated that he advise Trump not to concede and continue to battle the election results in court. Nuttery? Absolutely.
But nothing in Clarence’s earlier ruling could reasonably be said to have had anything to do with his wife, because as noted, even if he knew everything, there is nothing in there that exposes her to criminal liability.
If these inferential partisan leaps were enough for recusal, then no judge could ever hear a case. There is not enough for recusal unless the decision has been made that all Republicans are evil and were all part of a grand conspiracy to overturn the election.
Also, the equivocation in the media on the word “overturn” is striking. It is used both for invoking lawful court process to challenge votes and for violently storming the capitol. The first is just fine and the second not so much; but hey, what’s it matter if some believe they are the same?
Surely Meadows has been indicted for such a terrible thing, right? Or is perhaps this description a large amount of political spin?
Again, nuttery, but what Meadows said was to have Trump electors meet and cast their votes Just in Case they won in the courts, that nobody could later say that they were invalid because they were not cast on the proper date. These “forgeries” are not like counterfeit bills that I can pass off at the car wash. Everyone knows what they are and their purpose would have been known by anyone who saw them.
Nobody has yet been indicted for the electoral forgery, but DoJ is actively investigating and the AGs of two of the relevant States have formally requested criminal charges be lodged.
Of note, they are not investigating the people who signed certificates in two States which specifically stated that they would only be valid in the event that the courts overturned the election results and awarded their State’s votes to Trump. But in five other States, people signed certificates simply affirming that Trump had won, and submitted these to the National Archives. Note, again, they did not sit on them pending some court decision, they actually submitted them to the National Archives with no indication whatsoever that they weren’t legitimate. It is known that John Eastman conspired with them to do this, so that Pence could then declare that those States’ votes were “disputed”. Their purpose was indeed known; to act as a fig leaf for the destruction of Constitutional democracy, the kindling for a modern Reichstag fire.
Meadows himself has not yet been indicted in connection with this plot, but the House has requested the DoJ to charge him with contempt of Congress for refusing to tell them what he knows about it.
So Clarence’s view lost and the papers were released and confirmed that there is no evidence of any of the above. She texted Meadows previously, no doubt having outsized influence because of who her husband is, and advocated that he advise Trump not to concede and continue to battle the election results in court. Nuttery? Absolutely.
But nothing in Clarence’s earlier ruling could reasonably be said to have had anything to do with his wife, because as noted, even if he knew everything, there is nothing in there that exposes her to criminal liability.
At the very least, she was urging the White House Chief of Staff to participate in an illegal scheme to overturn election results. I don’t know what the exact charge would be, but surely it’s illegal to solicit a government official to commit a crime. It is not unreasonable to infer that he actively conspired with her in support of this criminal scheme, which would open them both to more serious charges.
The only way you could argue that criminal intent wasn’t present in those texts is if you say that Meadows and/or Thomas actually believed there were legitimate reasons to question to the outcome of the election and some reasonable possibility that courts might rule in their favor, which is a prima facie absurd assertion.
I could disagree more, but ultimately the courts would decide if these Trump certificates were valid (and they unanimously decided that they weren’t). I have trouble with making a litigation position a crime even if it is found to be a bad litigation position.
IMHO, throwing Al Gore, his lawyers, and everyone on his team in jail for contesting the FL vote, while not at all the same, is only a difference in degree and not of kind. Many of these adjectives (sedition, overturning the certified results of the FL election, etc.) could have been hurled at him, and were. If you start down this road, you close off the courts, and start becoming a banana republic where each transfer of power comes with jailing the last administration.
The Pence theory of declaring the votes invalid was goofy and irresponsible, but again, it was an attempt, a poor one, at using a legal theory.
If I storm the Congress, the White House, or the Supreme Court with a group of guys shooting people, then that is rebellion. Attempting to use the process for your own gain, even if the consensus is that the theory is stupid? I think not, and it is very dangerous to go down that road.
Right. Al Gore literally was responsible for counting the votes and announcing that he lost, and he didn’t take the opportunity to lie about it and try to magically anoint himself President to the cheers of a murderous mob that he had encouraged to show up at the appropriate time.
From a certain point of view, I suppose you could say the difference between a spitball and a bullet is one of degree rather than kind.
UV, how do you feel about SovCits printing their own currency and claiming they can pay their taxes with it, because of their litigation position that Ohio wasn’t a State in 1916? Does putting these people in jail for tax evasion put us on the dangerous road to a banana republic? If not, what is the difference you see between them and Eastman/Trump?
Further: What do you think would have happened if Pence had gone along with the scheme, claimed to be unable to tell which of the certificates submitted were real, and announced that the election results were disputed? What if the House then voted to re-elect Trump? What legal or Constitutional mechanism, in your mind, would guarantee that Biden would nevertheless be inaugurated and there would be a peaceful transfer of power?
If you can’t answer that question, then you are admitting that only Mike Pence’s personal integrity saved the country from a situation where the peaceful transfer of power to the legitimate winner of the election was at least in doubt. How could you possibly think that the people responsible for creating that situation wouldn’t have committed serious crimes?
The guiding principle of avoiding the appearance of impropriety is, well, to avoid the appearance. It does not involve litigating what the justice knew or when he knew it. A justice should recuse himself long before matters get to the point of haggling over those details. It shouldn’t even be close.
I don’t know the details of the Thomas’s marriage, but we generally presume they are on speaking terms, they share a bed, they have a certain level of intimacy and mutual sympathy to one another. One couldn’t be compelled to testify against the other if there were criminal proceedings. It is abundantly obvious that Clarence Thomas could have been fully aware that his wife had an interest in the proceedings, whether due to activism, or a belief that the election should be overturned, or a desire to protect her comrades from consequences.
It doesn’t matter if she did any crimes! Even if she only believes that the rioters were justified, didn’t commit any crimes, and shouldn’t suffer any consequences, she shares a house and a bed with a Supreme Court Justice. We can never know how she does or doesn’t influence him, so he has an ethical duty to eliminate that entire cloud of suspicion by recusing himself.
It bears repeating since people don’t seem to get this, but recusal isn’t any sort of sanction or penalty or mark on one’s record. It’s a sign of integrity! The only negative outcome is that the judicial result would be deprived of a reliable conservative vote, and it’s pretty evident that this is the main guiding principle of Thomas’s apologists here.
There it is, live and in color. You can’t do anything about the obvious corruption of Clarence Thomas if Mark Meadows isn’t in jail. Mark Meadows, of course, didn’t do anything wrong because is Trump in jail? Did a coup happen? I don’t think so.
If a coup had happened, surely someone would have done something about the obvious corruption!
Exactly. And that’s easy. All you do is focus everything through your victimhood partisan lens: “They’re only fussing because he’s a Republican!”, which means you never have to examine the facts in a non-biased way to determine if laws have been broken (they were) or ethical choices were corrupt as determined by the reasonable man standard (they were).
I know this was already quoted, but I’m going to focus solely on the relevant portions, with emphasis:
28 U.S. Code § 455 - Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge
(a) Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
(5) He or his spouse, or a person within the third degree of relationship to either of them, or the spouse of such a person:
(iii) Is known by the judge to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding;
(c) A judge should inform himself about his personal and fiduciary financial interests, and make a reasonable effort to inform himself about the personal financial interests of his spouse and minor children residing in his household.
It’s really that simple. And note the use of the words, “shall” and “should.” There’s no wiggle room here. An ethically honest justice must make reasonable efforts to inform him or herself of any potential conflicts existing with his/her spouse, and upon discovering their existence, he or she must then recuse.
How likely do you think it has to be that a Justice’s spouse will eventually be indicted in connection with a certain matter before a Justice should be expected to recuse? I think the “appearance of impropriety” standard requires a very low bar, certainly not higher than 1%.
At this point, Mrs. Thomas has not been indicted, but is known to have associated closely with someone who has also not yet been indicted, but who is known to be actively under DoJ investigation, and who the majority of the House believes to have committed crimes. I certainly wouldn’t say it’s more likely than not that she will be indicted, but given those facts I don’t see how you could say the chances are less than 1%.
What would be the analogy? Are there credible allegations that Biden conspired with someone to commit some specific crime? Is there an ongoing DoJ investigation that could reasonably be expected to have even a 1% chance of resulting in charges against Biden or a family member?
Given that Biden has professional relationships with literally thousands of people, I’m sure it’s literally true that Biden has “associates” who are under investigation for something or other, but my statement wasn’t actually as vague as it sounds quoted out of context.
Also, the remedies aren’t analogous. If you say Biden is a crook, it implies you believe that he should be thrown out of office. Nobody is arguing that Justice Thomas has committed a crime and should be removed from the bench; they are just saying that he should recuse himself from this particular group of cases.
I’m not aware of any credible allegations of criminal wrongdoing against Joe Biden. I’m not aware of any allegations of criminal wrongdoing - credible or otherwise - against Ginni Thomas. There is an ongoing DOJ investigation which has a pretty decent chance of producing criminal charges against Hunter Biden, who Joe Biden is pretty closely associated with.
My earlier remark was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but to the extent that there was a serious point it’s that you need something more tangible than “he/she was associated with some other guy who might be indicted” before beginning to assign odds of potential guilt, which I don’t think you have in either case. (BTW, in the analogy, Joe Biden is comparable to Ginni Thomas, not Clarence Thomas. Hunter Biden would be comparable to - I assume this is who you meant - Mark Meadows.)
