Following calls for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to step down from the case investigating former president Donald Trump for racketeering in the 2020 Georgia election, some people online are asking for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to do the same.
Political analysts said in 2022, the participation of his wife, Ginni Thomas, in a rally just before the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol is an apparent conflict of interest because he voted not to release White House records for an investigation into the insurrection when he should’ve recused himself from the vote, Atlanta Black Star reported previously.
That year, the hashtags #ClarenceThomasMustResign and #ClarenceThomasResign exploded with calls for the Supreme Court Justice, who has recused himself fewer than 60 times since 1993, to step down.
Thomas also has been embroiled in controversy recently after hiring law clerk Crystal Clanton, who was accused of sending a racist text message in 2015 that read, “I hate Black people,” to a colleague at conservative non-profit Turning Point USA, where Clanton worked at the time, Atlanta Black Star reported previously.
Clanton also worked for Thomas’s wife in 2017 and was allowed to live in the couple’s Virginia home for nearly a year as part of that arrangement.
Thomas himself has also been accused of accepting luxury gifts from political donors, while his wife is said to have supported Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign.
“Fascinating. Clarence Thomas’s wife was involved in the insurrection, but yet no Republican wants Thomas [to] recuse himself,” an X user voiced on the social media platform. “I wonder why.”
They added, “The Supreme Court needs to adopt an enforceable code of ethics like every other court.”
Another X user called out the fact that while Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Willis could remain on the Trump case if special prosecutor Nathan Wade stepped down “simply because they ‘might’ have been intimate,” Thomas was still allowed to hear a case involving his wife — whom the X user described as a “seditionist” — without recusing himself.
Meanwhile, Georgia State University professor Eric Segall posted on X that Thomas, who Segall considers to be “no judge,” would “someday be remembered in infamy as a political hack.”
“Clarence Thomas must have zero involvement in any case involving Trump and the election or [Jan. 6]. But he will not recuse because he is a GOP operative yesterday, today and tomorrow,” Segall wrote.
Others on social media flat-out accused the Supreme Court of being corrupt – “Clarence Thomas especially,” asserted one X user, who asked, “Why hasn’t Ginni been indicted?”
