The U.S. Supreme Court stands to play an important role in the 2024 election process when it determines whether former President Donald Trump’s name should be included on the ballot in Colorado. That state’s highest court determined Trump to be ineligible with a controversial interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause.”
The matter is now heading to the nation’s highest court, and anti-Trump Democrats are already planning a strategy to blunt the impact of a forthcoming decision.
For her part, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is hoping to pressure Justice Clarence Thomas to remove himself from the case, thus diminishing the court’s conservative majority. She cited allegations that tie his wife, Ginni, to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protest as sufficient reason for him to sit this case out.
“It’s very clear: Clarence Thomas and, rather his wife, Ginni, participated in the events of Jan. 6, and now what is likely coming before the Supreme Court is a judgment as to whether an event that his wife participated in, that his wife has been investigated by in the Jan. 6 committee, qualifies as an insurrection,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a recent CNN interview.
She joined a number of other Democratic lawmakers in penning a letter to Thomas earlier this month that compelled him to recuse himself.
“It is unthinkable that you could be impartial in deciding whether an event your wife personally organized qualifies as an ‘insurrection’ that would prevent someone from holding the office of president,” the letter states.
In her remarks earlier this week, the New York Democrat cited Thomas’ decision to recuse himself from a 2022 case involving former Trump legal adviser John Eastman as a “precedent” for him to also skip this case.
“I think our hope is that Clarence Thomas has shown that he is going to recuse himself from a case, this is one of the most direct implications that he has with respect to perhaps one of any of the cases that has come before the court,” she said. “This truly is not even about partisan point scoring. This is about the integrity of the court.”
She went on to allege that if he does not recuse himself, the decision “would have larger ramifications not just for Clarence Thomas but for the Supreme Court overall.”
In late 2022, Ginni Thomas expressed regret for sending texts to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows regarding the outcome of the 2020 election, telling the House Jan. 6 committee: “You know, it was an emotional time. I’m sorry these texts exist.”
