Rep. Ilhan Omar has an idea. How about impeaching Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas because his wife, Ginni, sent some text messages to President Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows? No doubt this sounds like a reasonable idea to the far-left progressives in Omar’s political bubble. Apparently, Clarence Thomas must be held responsible for his wife’s political activities.
We are still reliving the 2020 presidential election. The media is obsessed with Trump and doesn’t know how to move past him in their news coverage. He is great for ratings and clicks for online articles. When text messages from Ginni Thomas to Meadows were conveniently leaked to the press by someone with access to them through the January 6 committee, Omar jumped on Twitter and posted that it is time to impeach Clarence Thomas.
Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached https://t.co/ZuZbxkMaYs
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 25, 2022
Omar connects non-existent dots that link Ginni’s communication with Meadows to Clarence Thomas’ vote in the Supreme Court against allowing Trump’s documents on the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill to be released to the January 6 committee. The others on the court voted against Trump and in favor of the committee. Omar and other progressives think Thomas should have recused himself from that vote, given his wife’s involvement with communicating with Trump’s chief of staff.
Some interesting tidbits have come out since those documents were released because it is to the benefit of the January 6 committee to leak them. Besides the 29 text messages to Meadows from Ginni, a never-used draft executive order to seize voting machines was included. This gotcha moment involving Thomas and his wife comes at a particularly unfortunate time as Justice Thomas is hospitalized for an infection and there are really no details on his recovery being released.
The Stop the Steal protest is not the first time Ginni Thomas’ political activity has been subjected to media reporting. She has been a thorn in the side of progressives for many years. She was very active in the Tea Party movement during the Obama administration. It isn’t breaking news that she’s a Trump supporter. Ginni gave an interview to the Washington Free Beacon earlier this month and talked about January 6, 2021. She said she was not an organizer of the rally she attended before the riot broke out on Capitol Hill. She noted that though she and her husband share the same principles and ideals, they keep their professional lives separate. Critics have tried for years to claim it is an ethical violation for Thomas to vote on issues that his wife may have some connection to.
“Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America,” Thomas told the Washington Free Beacon. “But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work.”
Though Thomas has taken steps to adjust her public profile, such as deleting her Facebook page, she has no plans to curtail her professional activities.
“If you are going to be true to yourself and your professional calling, you can never be intimidated, chilled, or censored by what the press or others say,” she said.
There has been no evidence that Clarence Thomas’ vote on the House subpoena for White House records relating to the 2020 elections was due to his wife’s belief in a stolen election. However, there have been calls for Thomas to recuse himself from any future cases related to the events of January 6. Ginni Thomas says she did attend the Trump rally that day but she left before Trump spoke to the crowd and was only there for a short time.
Thomas told the Free Beacon that she was in the crowd at the Ellipse rally for a short time the morning of Jan. 6, but returned home before Trump took the stage at noon. Her presence at the Ellipse during the morning was the extent of her activity, she said.
“I was disappointed and frustrated that there was violence that happened following a peaceful gathering of Trump supporters on the Ellipse on Jan. 6,” Thomas told the Free Beacon. “There are important and legitimate substantive questions about achieving goals like electoral integrity, racial equality, and political accountability that a democratic system like ours needs to be able to discuss and debate rationally in the political square. I fear we are losing that ability.”
In January and February, the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine each published long-form pieces alleging that Thomas had a much larger role in the events of Jan. 6. The Times in particular cast Thomas as an important trouble-shooter in the leadup to the rally, reporting she acted as an intermediary among bickering activists organizing the event.
Is Clarence Thomas to be held accountable for his wife’s political activism? He shouldn’t be. Was Rep. Jamie Raskin, a fairly powerful Democrat on prominent committees and a member of the House impeachment team during Trump’s impeachments held accountable for remarks his wife has made about wanting to kill off the fossil fuel industry? She’s a Duke professor who was Biden’s nominee to the Federal Reserve board. Sarah Bloom Raskin is on record as being in support of banning banking institutions from financing oil and gas exploration and production. Her nomination was eventually withdrawn because it had no Republican support but throughout the process, no one questioned Raskin about how involved he is in her activities. Husbands and wives lead separate lives in their careers and are not responsible for whatever the other does or says.
It’s been popular for the far left to demand the impeachment of Justice Kavanaugh over unproven claims of sexual misconduct. Because Supreme Court justices are given lifetime tenure, they can not just be fired, they have to be impeached. The impeachment process is the same as that for a president. If the House of Representatives votes to impeach, there would be a Senate trial. The House only needs a simple majority to impeach a Supreme Court justice or any federal judge. The Senate requires a 2/3 majority to convict and then remove a justice or judge.
Only one Supreme Court justice has been impeached. Justice Samuel Chase was impeached in 1805. His conduct on the bench was determined to be overly partisan. He was acquitted in the Senate.
As much as far-left progressives like Omar would like it to happen, Clarence Thomas will not be impeached, thus allowing Joe Biden to nominate another Democrat to the Supreme Court.
This article was originally published by Hot Air. Read the original article.
