Several House Democrats have called on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the case involving whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution.
The letter added that “if you want to show the American people that the Supreme Court’s recent Code of Conduct is worth more than the paper it is written on, you must do the honorable thing and recuse yourself from any decisions in the case.” Senate Democrats sent a similar letter to Justice Thomas last week, making related demands.
The Supreme Court last month approved a code of ethics, in which the justices would pledge to rescue themselves from a case “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
The ethics code also says that “a Justice should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” including instances in which a justice knows their spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected” by the decision or could be a material witness, the Democrat lawmakers wrote. They claimed that Justice Thomas’s wife, Ginni, is heavily involved in Republican political circles and attended a Trump rally after the 2020 election.
In September 2022, Ms. Thomas said that she was “certain I never spoke with [Justice Thomas] about any of the challenges to the 2020 election, as I was not involved in those challenges in any way,” according to her congressional testimony.
Ms. Thomas said that the Supreme Court justice was not aware of text messages she exchanged with former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, while alleging that the House Jan. 6 sub-committee had “leaked them to the press while my husband was in a hospital bed fighting an infection.”
The letter came about a week after special counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to determine “whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.” The court agreed to take up the case, setting a Dec. 20 deadline for President Trump’s attorneys to respond.
Justice Thomas, who was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush, and the court have not issued public statements on the letters. The Epoch Times has contacted the Supreme Court for comment on Monday.
In October, Justice Thomas recused himself from the court’s decision not to hear a case related to former Trump attorney John Eastman. However, Mr. Eastman had previously served as a clerk to Justice Thomas.
The case, one of four criminal cases facing President Trump as he again seeks the White House, is appealing a federal judge’s ruling this month rejecting the former president’s bid to dismiss the case based on an argument that he could not be prosecuted for official actions he took as president.
Immunity Appeal
Earlier this month, President Trump’s attorneys said that subjecting former presidents to criminal prosecution for conduct related to their official responsibilities would weaken the presidency. But a federal judge in his election case, Tanya Chutkan, dismissed that argument and claimed it would give former presidents a “lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”After the appeal was filed and before the Supreme Court took up the case, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement that the former president’s “most sacred obligations and responsibilities as President was to ensure that the election process was conducted in a way that complied with the law, including investigating and challenging election fraud and irregularities,” referring to his comments that he made following the 2020 election.
The campaign spokesman said that President Trump has “absolute immunity from prosecution, and litigation, for carrying out his sworn and solemn duties as President.”
After the Supreme Court decided to take up the special counsel’s petition, Judge Chutkan last week halted all activity related to the election case.
“This is a big win for President Trump and our rule of law,” Mr. Cheung said in a statement after the order was handed down. He added that the ruling “derails” special counsel Jack Smith’s “rush to judgment strategy of interfering in the 2024 presidential election.”
