Clarence Thomas is an incredibly inspiring justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, a champion of clarity, logic and the actual meaning of the Constitution, absolutely steadfast in his devotion to rule of law over the worship of ideological certitudes. You know what all of this means, right? If he is caught in situations of the kind the late, rightly applauded Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was involved in, he could be thrown to the wolves.
And sorry to say, it has happened. His wife, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, is a pro-Trump, dedicated, activist right-winger who sent emails to Donald Trump’s chief of staff after the 2020 presidential election arguing that Joe Biden won through fraud. Most of us say phooey to her conclusion, but she had every right to do that. She and her husband received no financial benefit. He stays away from her political doings and therefore does not need to be investigated or recuse himself from a whole bunch of cases in which he will continue his decades-long judicial consistency on the side of truth as he sees it.
Oh, but wait, it is angrily said, he was the only justice to vote against this chief of staff having to turn over certain material related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and being sought by the House of Representatives. This material included the Ginni Thomas emails, but they had already been turned over to the House and Thomas’s vote was in harmony with his record of honoring executive privilege.
