OAN’s Brooke Mallory
5:28 PM – Tuesday, January 9, 2024
Due to the justice’s wife’s alleged “attempts to rig the 2020 election,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez says that she is advocating for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the Colorado case involving former President Donald Trump and his eligibility for the 2024 ballot.
“It’s very clear: Clarence Thomas and, rather, his wife, Ginni, participated in the events of Jan. 6, and now what is likely coming before the Supreme Court is a judgment as to whether an event that his wife participated in, that his wife has been investigated by in the Jan. 6 committee, qualifies as an insurrection,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in an interview with Anderson Cooper on Monday.
“Clarence Thomas’s decision on that, one way or another, and overall the court’s decision on that, would directly implicate his wife, and so, this is just one of the most classic, textbook conflicts of interest, and it would frankly be a scandal if he did not recuse himself,” she continued.
According to a letter that Ocasio-Cortez and seven other House Democrats wrote to the justice last week, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas “attended the January 6 rally, [and] she was instrumental in planning it and bringing the insurrectionists to the Capitol,” they claimed.
“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,” House Democrats continued.
The Supreme Court will decide whether or not Trump has presidential immunity in the 2020 federal election subversion case, which is being handled by Special Counsel Jack Smith. House Democrats have also urged Clarence Thomas to withdraw from the case.
After the committee sought an interview with Ginni Thomas for months due to her alleged involvement in the U.S. Capitol breach on January 6th, 2022, she appeared before the panel for almost three hours in September 2022. She maintained that there was fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election throughout the conversation.
Regarding the question of whether Ginni Thomas was instrumental in the attempts to have the election results overturned, committee members were divided.
On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez maintained that Clarence Thomas had established a “precedent” when he withdrew from a case involving John Eastman, a former Trump legal advisor, in October 2022.
Although Clarence Thomas did not provide an explanation for his recusal, the New York Democrat said that a document sent to the committee on January 6th revealed correspondence between Ginni Thomas and Eastman.
“I think our hope is that Clarence Thomas has shown that he is going to recuse himself from a case, this is one of the most direct implications that he has with respect to perhaps one of any of the cases that has come before the court,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “This truly is not even about partisan point scoring. This is about the integrity of the court,” the congresswoman said. “And to not recuse oneself from a case where a justice is so deeply involved would have larger ramifications not just for Clarence Thomas but for the Supreme Court overall.”
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