During a recent appearance on CNN, longtime journalist Carl Bernstein went after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over the involvement of Clarence’s wife, Ginni, in pushes to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcome. Despite those connections, Clarence has continued his participation in proceedings related to Trump and the last election — proceedings from which Bernstein said the Justice should recuse himself.
Specifically, Ginni texted — a lot — about pushing back on the election results with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who obviously wasn’t just anybody. Meadows, who was also involved in election subversion attempts, worked directly with Trump. In one message, Ginni wrote that Meadows was “the leader, with [Trump], who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” Bernstein spoke out after Clarence complained about the supposed bullying of the Supreme Court in the context of its decision-making on abortion. The journalist remarked:
‘I think that Clarence Thomas talking about faith in institutions is a little misguided, given particularly the role of his wife in the “Stop the Steal” movement around the president of the United States. The wife of a Supreme Court Justice doing what Ginni Thomas did is utterly unheard of in the history of the United States. So Justice Thomas talking about legitimacy of institutions, either the White House or the court itself — and he should recuse himself, which he refuses to do, from any case involving the president of the United States and the election — there is a real failure of institutions, especially on the Supreme Court, by a rogue Justice who would not say, “I’m going to step aside.”‘
New: Trump responds to CBS News 60 Minutes about claims that he suggested to former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper that they should attack the drug cartels with missiles: “No comment.”
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) May 9, 2022
“Let’s look at what Ginni Thomas did,” Bernstein added. “Let’s look at what she was saying, and we have texts of what she was saying. It is crazy stuff. It is out there, but it is also encouraging the president of the United States, really, to stage a coup.” And despite these details, Clarence still participated in a case dealing with a request by the former president to shield certain records from his administration from getting to the House committee investigating the Capitol riot. Clarence was the lone dissenting Justice in that matter, which ended with the rest of the court deciding in the committee’s favor. Watch comments from Bernstein about these issues below:
Efforts to understand the scope of the problems that led to the violence that swept the Capitol on January 6 are continuing. All four cases involving Capitol rioters that have so far progressed to jury trials have seen those trials end the same way — with convictions on all counts. And three individuals involved with the far-right group known as the Oath Keepers have now pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy in connection to actions taken around the time of the Capitol attack. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes (who’s not one of the group members who pleaded guilty) allegedly called someone close to Trump hours after the breach to push for the then-president to involve the Oath Keepers in securing another term in office. Rhodes seems to have been gunning for the invocation of the Insurrection Act, which lets presidents call up militias.
Just in: Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani will not be testifying to the Jan. 6 committee tomorrow, per sources familiar. Appears the entire interview is off for the moment.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) May 5, 2022
