Supreme court justice Clarence Thomas must recuse himself from ruling on Donald Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 presidential election, a prominent Democrat said Sunday, warning that the leading Republican candidate is seeking to become a “political martyr” as he pursues a second presidency.
Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin was speaking ahead of the nation’s highest court stepping in to adjudicate recent state rulings in Maine and Colorado that struck the former president from the general election primaries under the US constitution’s 14th amendment insurrection clause.
Thomas, whose wife, Ginni, a hard right conservative, was a vocal proponent of Trump’s big lie that his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden was fraudulent, should stand down ahead of the supreme court hearing the case, Raskin argued. Trump’s legal challenges could begin as early as Tuesday.
Raskin led the push for Trump’s second impeachment following the deadly January 6 riot that the ex-president’s supporters staged at the US Capitol.
She had direct involvement in the events of that day and is thus related to the case, so there is a conflict of interest for Clarence Thomas. It doesn’t matter if she is part of the trial itself, that’s not what determines a conflict of interest. The Justice has a personal connection to the case.
For a hypothetical to compare… Would it be okay if on a case involving say Hunter’s laptop, the spouse of a Biden family friend were the judge for the case? The judge may not directly part of the Biden family, and may not be directly related to the events, but they clearly have a conflict of interest.
A conflict of interest doesn’t mean that you’re directly involved, it means that you have a connection to the case that could be seen as having a bias outside normal court procedures.
Fair enough, you convinced me. I was originally only thinking of this as a limited case regarding the 14th amendment. But if the supreme Court rules against Trump in this case, they’d be ruling that there was an insurrection, which could open his wife up to legal liability on that front. Based on that new understanding, I’d agree that Clarence Thomas should recuse himself.
