House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stopped short of saying that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should resign but asserted that his wife Ginni Thomas’s text messages to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to work to overturn the 2020 election raise ethical questions about whether he can preside over cases related to the Jan. 6 riot fairly.
Pelosi took a swing at Thomas when asked if he should step down from the high court, telling reporters, “I never thought he should have been appointed.”
The California Democrat declined to call for his resignation, advocating for the passage of the party’s For The People Act, better known as H.R. 1, which she argues would place stronger ethical standards on Supreme Court justices.
“I’m not going to go to that, but I will say that in H.R. 1, our bill to have cleaner government, we have a call for the Supreme Court to have a code of ethics,” she said at a press conference on Thursday.
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“They have no code of ethics — and really? It’s the Supreme Court of the United States … and we don’t know what their ethical standards are.”
Pelosi went on to accuse Ginni Thomas of being a “proud member of a coup,” arguing that her communications with senior administration officials and conservative lawmakers about unwinding President Joe Biden’s victory are worrisome.
“If your wife is an admitted and proud contributor to a coup of our country, maybe you should weigh that in your ethical standards,” she said.
In the wake of the text messages emerging, a handful of Democratic lawmakers have called for Clarence Thomas to step down, sounding the alarm about the justice being the sole dissenter in the Supreme Court’s ruling that former President Donald Trump could not use executive privilege to block the select committee from receiving documents related to Jan. 6.
Some, including progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, have gone as far as floating impeaching the justice.
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Republicans have largely stood by Thomas, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy arguing he is capable of upholding the Constitution.
“It’s his decision based upon law. If you spent any time studying the Supreme Court justice, he’s one who studies correctly,” McCarthy said. “If he sees it’s not upholding the Constitution, he’ll rule against it. If it’s the Constitution, that’s what his job should be, it’s him.”
Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate.
