Justice Thomas Must Resign Following New Revelations About Ginni Thomas’ Involvement in Jan. 6 Insurrection

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (March 24, 2022) — New reports this evening revealed that Ginni Thomas, right-wing activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was in constant communication with Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — encouraging Trump’s efforts to overturn the election — in the two months leading up to the deadly insurrection on January 6, 2021. Ginni Thomas called on Meadows not to let the Trump camp concede following his election loss, saying, “Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”

Also among their text messages were words of encouragement by Ginni Thomas to reverse President Biden’s victory in the 2020 Election and correspondence from Meadows thanking her “for all that [she] do[es].”

In response to the news, Take Back the Court Action Fund Executive Director Sarah Lipton-Lubet called on Justice Clarence Thomas to resign from his seat on the Court — or face impeachment by Congress.

“The heinous attack on the Capitol was an attack on our nation’s fundamental values, and those clearly involved in and adjacent to its execution cannot be allowed to sit idly in their seats of power as democracy crumbles. If one thing is clear, it’s that there’s much more to the story of Ginni Thomas’ participation in the January 6 attack that the House Select Committee and the American public deserve to know.

“It’s evident Ginni Thomas was not merely a bystander during the January 6 insurrection and she can no longer be treated as such. The select panel has a responsibility to subpoena her so the truth can finally come out.

“Given that Justice Thomas has already made known he won’t recuse himself from cases related to his wife’s right-wing activism, and the damning evidence of his wife’s involvement in this attack on our democracy, Thomas is clearly unfit to serve on the nation’s highest Court.

“Clarence Thomas must immediately resign from his seat on the Supreme Court. If he refuses, Congress must move to impeach him. The integrity of the Court, our judicial system, and our democracy as a whole depends on it.”

Justice Thomas has repeatedly been the Court’s lone holdout stonewalling transparency on matters of the insurrection and efforts to overturn the 2020 Election, dissenting from the Court’s decision to allow the House investigative panel to access key Trump administration documents and disagreeing with the Court’s decision not to take up a case that threatened the legitimacy of mail-in ballots in the 2020 Election.

This is far from the first evidence linking Ginni Thomas to the deadly attack on the Capitol. Recent reporting in The New York Times and The New Yorker delved into her role on the board of the Council for National Policy Action — a major right-wing organization pushing lawmakers not to certify the results of the 2020 Election prior to the insurrection. She similarly denounced the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection, even signing a letter to House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy calling for Republican members of the committee to be expelled from the House Republican Caucus and accusing the committee of issuing improper subpoenas.

It has never been more evident that Supreme Court justices should not be allowed to adjudicate on their own disqualification from cases where they may have conflicts of interest. With the nation’s democracy and the Court’s legitimacy at stake, Chief Justice Roberts owes the American people an explanation and should be held accountable for allowing such a blatant violation of ethics and justice to happen in plain sight.