“The Thomases are normalizing the prospect of too close an association between the supreme court and those who litigate before it,” said Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University and co-host of the
Strict Scrutiny podcast. “This isn’t the first time that Mrs Thomas has had dealings with those who come before the court and seek her husband’s vote.”
The revelation that there is substantial overlap between Ginni Thomas and the anti-abortion lobbying effort focused on her husband and the other conservative justices will intensify the growing sense of unease surrounding her hyper-energetic conservative activism. In recent years she has placed herself in the thick of some of the most bitterly contested political controversies that have come – or could come – before the court.
Earlier this year, the New Yorker published an investigation into the mounting evidence of possible conflicts of interest under
the headline: ‘Is Ginni Thomas a threat to the supreme court?’
Thomas has been dubbed a “
radical insurrectionist” for her role in backing Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Yet her husband has refused to recuse himself from cases relating to the insurrection, including one in January in which he became the only justice to dissent in an 8-1 decision over allowing hundreds of documents held by the National Archives to be reviewed by the House committee investigating the January 6 storming of the US Capitol.
Five weeks after that decision, it was revealed that leading up to January 6 Ginni Thomas exchanged
29 text messages with Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, urging him to block Joe Biden’s victory. It is very possible that those text messages were among the documents that the committee had been seeking, with Clarence Thomas the sole justice opposing disclosure.
The January 6 committee has said it wants to interview Ginni Thomas over her anti-democratic antics around the 2020 election.
Last week the
Washington Post revealed that she applied pressure on lawmakers in Wisconsin to block Biden’s win, having previously
done the same in Arizona.
Ginni Thomas embroiled in scandal over her role in plot to overturn Roe