Top court judge's wife attended Jan. 6 rally
WASHINGTON • Virginia “Ginny” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, for the first time has publicly acknowledged that she participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 “Stop-the-Steal” rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, raising questions about the impartiality of her husband's work.
In an interview with the conservative outlet The Washington Free Beacon that was published Monday, Thomas said she was part of the crowd that gathered at the Ellipse that morning to support Donald Trump. Trump was claiming that widespread voter fraud delivered the presidency to Democrat Joe Biden — a falsehood he continues to repeat.
Thomas said she was at the rally for a short time, got cold and went home before Trump took the stage at noon.
“I was disappointed and frustrated that there was violence that happened following a peaceful gathering of Trump supporters on the Ellipse on Jan. 6,” the conservative activist told the publication. “There are important and legitimate substantive questions about achieving goals like electoral integrity, racial equality, and political accountability that a democratic system like ours needs to be able to discuss and debate rationally in the political square. I fear we are losing that ability.”
Thomas insisted that her work is separate from that of her husband.
A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In February 2021, Thomas apologized to her husband's former law clerks after a rift developed among them over her election advocacy of Trump and endorsement of the Jan. 6 rally.
While Thomas's activism has overlapped with cases that have been decided by her husband, her connection to the rally that preceded the insurrection has reignited fury among his critics, who say it illustrates a gaping hole in the court's rules: Justices essentially decide for themselves whether they have a conflict of interest.
Last December, Ginni Thomas signed a letter criticizing the work of the bipartisan House committee investigating the Capitol attack as “overtly partisan political persecution.” The next month, the Supreme Court decided on Trump's request to deny the committee White House records that Biden had ordered be released. Instead of recusing himself, Clarence Thomas was the only justice to say he would grant Trump's request.
Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonpartisan group that advocates for reforms to the Supreme Court, said Thomas's participation in the rally should have been enough for Clarence Thomas to recuse from the House committee case. The justice's failure to do so, Roth said, is yet another example of how poorly Supreme Court justices follow the recusal standard.