A Washington Post op-ed says Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from involvement in a court case related to the outcome of the presidential election.
“Given these statements, does anyone really believe that Thomas can impartially hear a case impacting Biden and come to an opinion based on the law and facts?” Colbert King wrote in an article headlined “Clarence Thomas should recuse himself if the Supreme Court has to decide the election” after outlining Thomas’s contentious Supreme Court nomination process that then-Sen. Joe Biden was directly involved in.
King, who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2003, referred to Thomas’s 1991 confirmation proceedings as “one of the most acrimonious and polarizing congressional events of the 20th century” and argued that Thomas’s subsequent criticism of the process, specifically Biden’s role, shows that he isn’t capable of being impartial deciding a presidential election involving Biden.
King took issue with Thomas’s statement during his hearing that the process was “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”
Thomas made the comment in reference to sexual harassment allegations levied against him by his former colleague Anita Hill that were a main focus of his confirmation hearing but ultimately did not prevent his confirmation.
“Most of my opponents on the Judiciary Committee cared about only one thing: How would I rule on abortion rights?” Thomas said about his confirmation hearing last year. “You really didn’t matter, and your life didn’t matter. What mattered was what they wanted. And what they wanted was this particular issue.”
Several Democrats have also suggested that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett should recuse herself from potential involvement in the November election due to her nomination taking place so close to an election.
“I think you know my spirit, which is to sit down and meet with people and talk to them. And I’m going to make it very clear, one of the things I want to ask her is will she recuse herself … in terms of any election issues that come before us because if she does not recuse herself, I fear that the court will be further delegitimized,” New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said this week.
“In other words, President Trump has said, ‘I will not accept the result of the election unless I win. I’m going to push it to the Supreme Court, and oh, by the way, during the election, I’m going to put somebody on the court, as well.’ So I hope to have a conversation with her, and I’m blessed to be on the Judiciary Committee, and I’ll have that, as well. And hopefully, I’ll have a good, informed dialogue back and forth,” Booker added.
