Refusal of the Recusal
The Most Interesting Life and Times of Justice Clarence Thomas
Only America could produce a man like Clarence Thomas. Descended from slaves and growing up speaking Gullah as his first language rather than English, Thomas rose from poverty to the deserts of corporate America and finally to our nation’s highest courts. He is the first in his family to go to college. He wanted to be a priest, then a civil rights activist, but he finally had to settle for being on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).
A guy like this is no stranger to adversity, controversy, or racism. Only the second Black to sit in the exalted ranks of the Supreme Court, Thomas was subject to a brutal confirmation hearing where he was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill. In case you don’t remember that far back—this happened in 1991—then-Senator Joe Biden was running the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was their job to give Thomas a thumbs up or thumbs down on the Supreme Court seat. Biden did not much like Thomas then—or now. Lately, Biden has been confrontational, stating the Clarence Thomas has taken luxury vacations with rich buddies—claims that hardly are worth mentioning considering Biden has spent 40% of his Presidency on vacay and often hobnobs with wealthy types and celebrities.
But back to 1991. Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment, in the form of talking about his sex life to her, wanting to date her, and making lewd remarks, but she was the only one who testified to that effect. Nancy Altman, who worked with Thomas and shared an office with him for two years, said she never saw or heard him do anything that might be considered sexist, harassing, bullying, or even offensive.
It took 99 long days to get Clarence Thomas confirmed on the court, during which he delivered a fiery speech, stating that the Senate Committee Biden led was committing a “high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks.” That speech likely got him the eventual confirmation, because it resonated with Americans all over the country, particularly Blacks who wanted to see a qualified attorney like Clarence Thomas arrive at SCOTUS. It also resonated with all Americans who were following it on television and who had grown weary of a long he said/she said argument. The vote was close: 52 for confirmation, 48 against, with most of the “yes” votes from Republicans.
While Biden did not much care for Clarence Thomas, the hearings were a bonanza for him in that it gave him a lot of publicity and TV time. This clip is taken from an article about a movie about the hearings—and it shows Biden was always Biden.
Curiously, the jury is still out on the Anita Hill allegations. Thomas got the nomination, so that in itself is a form of rebuttal, but no one ever disproved—or proved—what she had to say. The fact that Anita Hill was Black herself might have given her some credibility, but in the end, her one-woman testimony did not prevail. And besides, what Hill was accusing Thomas of is mild by today’s standards—jokes, randy office banter.
Clarence Thomas was always a conservative. Born in a shack in Georgia, Clarence’s family fractured when he was a child. This brought young Clarence and his brother to live with relatives who sent them to Catholic school. (Interestingly, this is the point where Clarence Thomas first lives in a home with indoor plumbing.) At school, young Clarence was exposed to civil rights activities. Despite his problems with speaking English (Gullah was his first language) and the fact that no one in the Thomas family had ever gone to college, Clarence did remarkably well in school. Although noted for being quiet and soft-spoken, he delivered the academic performance that got him enrolled in Conception Seminary in Missouri in 1967, where he hoped to become a priest. While he was studying there in his first semester, Martin Luther King was assassinated and Thomas was drawn unequivocally to civil rights for his life’s work.
With the aid of some mentors, Clarence got a full academic scholarship to College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts where he was one of the institute’s first Black students. He did well enough to matriculate to Yale Law School, where he was one of only 12 Black students. Thomas earned his law degree from Yale in 1974 and entered private legal practice in Atlanta, but he found few real job opportunities for a smart young Black attorney in Atlanta. He eventually took a position with Monsanto until President Reagan named him assistant secretary of education for the Office of Civil Rights in 1981. Ironically, the Senate confirmed him swiftly to that job. He moved around in government over the next decade, gaining a reputation for his fine legal mind and quiet manner. In 1990, when he was confirmed on the federal court of appeals, he gained attention of those in government. By 1990, Clarence Thomas was under consideration for SCOTUS.
Clarence Thomas has been married to Virginia “Ginni” Lamp since 1987. Clarence and Ginni have a lot in common, except of course race (Ginni is white). They are both conservative, both attorneys, and both inclined toward some activism over the course of their careers. Both supported Trump. But allegations surfaced that Ginni was somehow involved in some of the J6 activities—allegations that seem as thin as the charges from Anita Hill that Clarence told her once that he saw a pubic hair on a can of Coca-Cola. But now the charges are that Ginni is up to her neck in J6 stuff and Clarence must recuse himself from any future court cases related to Trump. And like all fraudulent charges, there are some grains of truth in the manure.
Ginni allegedly posted something about a “Stop the Steal” rally on Facebook. She did not organize J6, but she posted something.
She was accused of being one of the key J6 organizers, but even lefty sites debunked that. She did not mastermind J6. She did go to the J6 rally but she left before Trump spoke. She described her time at the J6 rally as “brief.”
She testified before the J6 Committee and said that she did not discuss J6 with her husband and said her husband overall was “uninterested in politics.”
Ginni is friends with Mark Meadows, Trump’s former Chief of Staff. She allegedly spoke to him and texted him about the 2020 election results. In fact, texts between the two were shown to Congress in March 2022. Ginni was vocal in those texts that she thought the election was rigged. She was concerned about election irregularities. She also said she hoped that some of the perpetrators of the election fraud would go to Gitmo.
But in those same texts, Ginni also condemned violence during J6.
Ginni also wrote to then-House-Minority leader Kevin McCarthy that she thought Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney should be removed from the J6 Select Committee. Nancy Pelosi had to find space on the committee for some Republicans but she did not allow the Republicans to pick them; Pelosi hand-picked Cheney and Kinzinger. Ginni said that this was disrespectful to our nation’s rule of law. By the way, Ginni was not the only person who thought that Pelosi’s high-handed seating of two compliant RINOs on the J6 Committee was unfair, considering it is protocol to let the Republicans pick their own representatives to the committee.
There’s more but it’s tedious. The bottom line is the Ginni Thomas—like many Americans—felt that the 2020 election was rigged, the J6 event was regrettable, and the J6 Committee to investigate the Capitol event was not handled in a way fair to Republicans. She had made statements vocally and in texts and online to that effect. There is no indication that she in any way broke the law or did anything unethical, beyond expressing an unpopular opinion in DC.
The big issue now for Justice Clarence Thomas is that our justice system has slapped a lot of weak, tenuous, and sometimes downright weird indictments against Donald Trump. This is unprecedented territory, having the incumbent use lawfare against his main opponent in a Presidential election year. Given the seriousness of the matter, its unprecedented nature, and the pugilistic personality of the defendant, these cases will percolate up to the Supreme Court. That’s almost a sure thing.
There are nine people on the Supreme Court, and one of them is Clarence Thomas. The current court has a Chief Justice, John Roberts, and the Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Sam Alito, Elena Kagen, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh are known as conservatives (Sotomayor, Kagen, and Jackson are liberals) but when it comes to the Supreme Court these lines are not as bright as one might think. For instance, Gorsuch is a Trump nominee and counts as a Conservative, but he is a staunch and vocal advocate for Native Americans (more of a left-leaning posture). Kagen came out of Obama’s orbit but can be surprisingly centrist. So while you could say the nine people in black robes in Washington, DC are six Conservatives and three liberals, that is a simplistic way of looking at things.
Besides, Conservative and liberal mean different things in SCOTUS than in Congress. Conservative justices tend to look at the Constitution as the original document, interpreting it the way they think the founders meant it to be interpreted. Liberal justices tend to see the Constitution as concepts that they have to modify to fit the times. So Conservatives are going to try to hark back to the originalist interpretations, while liberal justices are more comfortable making up entirely new stuff to fit the times. As liberal justices would say, the Constitution is a living document.
If Trump’s recent legal cases make it to the Supreme Court (and they will), the Democrats likely fear that Trump will get favorable rulings because the court is heavily conservative. (Democrats are in favor of democracy until something actually has to get voted on.) The Conservative cause will most likely prevail, after all, the Constitution does not favor indicting political opponents or weaponizing the Department of Justice. Forcing Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself would reset the balance at five to three (conservative to liberal) instead of six to three. For those who want a liberal decision, Thomas’s recusal probably wouldn’t help, but it could not hurt. Besides, it would surely annoy Conservatives.
But should Clarence Thomas recuse himself? If you remember the Anita Hill hearings, you probably already know what he’ll do. This man is soft-spoken, quiet, and very genteel, but he’s as tough as a two-dollar steak. Clarence Thomas was not involved in any of the J6 activities, not even in texts or conversations, but he is married to somebody who had opinions and who made a brief appearance that day at the Capitol but left early. So does that prejudice him? Is he likely to have bias in such decisions?
Considering the open and laser-precise vitriol of people like Jack Smith, Fani Willis, and Leticia James—people who openly campaigned and gave loud obnoxious speeches on how they were “going to get Trump,” it hardly seems fair that they don’t have to recuse themselves, but Clarence Thomas must.
The issue about recusal in this case is about bias. If anyone is biased against Trump, it’s Smith, Willis, and James. These prosecutors now going after Trump are not doing so because they believe a law was broken—they are doing so to interfere in the 2024 election. If Trump suddenly dropped out of the race or had he left politics altogether in 2021, none of these cases would have been brought. These are efforts to besmirch Trump or cost him valuable time and money in a campaign year. If those prosecutors and their teams are “fit” to their offices and do not need to recuse themselves, then neither does Clarence Thomas. All Thomas did was… well, nothing. He was just married to a woman who had an opinion that aligns with Trump.
Sometimes I do not think liberals do things like demand a Supreme Court Justice recuse himself because they think it’s right… they do it because if you ask a million outrageous stupid things, maybe once in a while, somebody will stupidly comply.