Wyden, Merkley, Colleagues Demand Answers from Justice Thomas for Violating Federal Conflict-of-Interest Law
After new revelations of wife Ginni Thomas’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, lawmakers call on Chief Justice Roberts to create binding ethics rules for the Supreme Court
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley this week co-signed a letter with Senate and House colleagues to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts demanding answers regarding Justice Thomas’s potential violation of federal ethics law, after last week’s explosive reporting on the efforts of his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Justice Thomas was the lone dissenting vote in a Supreme Court case requiring that Trump White House records be turned over to the January 6th House Select Committee earlier this year.
The lawmakers demanded a written explanation from Justice Thomas about his failure to recuse himself given these potential conflicts of interest, sought Justice Thomas’s recusal from future cases involving efforts to overturn the 2020 election or the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and called on Chief Justice Roberts to create binding, enforceable ethics rules for the Supreme Court.
“Justice Thomas’s participation in cases involving the 2020 election and the January 6th attack is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with federal ethics requirements… Justice Thomas has neither disclosed the extent of his knowledge about Ms. Thomas’s activities nor recused himself from multiple Court cases involving the 2020 election and the attempted insurrection that followed. In fact, Justice Thomas was the sole dissenting Justice who would have blocked the January 6th Committee’s access to presidential records involving the Trump Administration’s efforts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power — records that could very well contain communications between Ms. Thomas and top White House officials given what we now know,” wrote the lawmakers.
Last week, The Washington Post and CBS News detailed Ms. Thomas’s efforts to persuade then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Between Election Day 2020 and the days following the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Ms. Thomas and Meadows exchanged 29 text messages, in which Ms. Thomas spread false theories about the election, urged Meadows to overturn the election results, and called for specific actions from the White House to help overturn the election. These revelations follow prior reporting about Ms. Thomas’s efforts to nullify the results of the 2020 election, including serving as one of the nine board members of a group that helped lead the “Stop the Steal” movement and calling for the punishment of House Republicans who participated in the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack.
In addition to raising concerns about whether Justice Thomas may have violated federal ethics law, the lawmakers noted the Supreme Court’s pattern of major ethics failures. Between 2003 and 2007, Justice Thomas failed to disclose $686,589 in his wife’s income from her work at the Heritage Foundation in violation of the Ethics in Government Act. Multiple Justices have failed to recuse themselves from cases before the Court while owning individual stocks in the parties, and Justices regularly accept lavish trips, donations to causes they support, and expensive memberships, in stark contrast to the gifts allowed under ethics restrictions imposed on other branches of government.
To fix the long pattern of ethics breaches at the Supreme Court, the lawmakers called on Chief Justice Roberts to commit to creating a binding Code of Conduct for the Court that includes enforceable provisions and a requirement that all Justices issue written recusal decisions. The lawmakers asked that Justice Roberts respond and make this commitment by April 28, 2022.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Representative Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., led the letter which, along with Wyden and Merkley, was co-signed by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., as well as Representatives Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., Hank Johnson, D-Ga., Cori Bush, D-Mo., Karen Bass, D-Calif., David Cicilline, D-R.I., Steven Cohen, D-Tenn., Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Deborah Ross, D-N.C.
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