This week’s Liberal Media Scream features an effort to smear Ginni Thomas, the activist wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, because of her activism on key Washington issues.
Leading the charge was MSNBC and The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, who wrote a story headlined “Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court?” Several MSNBC shows appeared to think “yes.”
On Friday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, for instance, fill-in anchor Garrett Haake said, “a new New Yorker article is raising questions about Thomas’s wife’s conservative activism.”
In his interview, Mayer called Thomas’s political activities “astonishing and worrisome” and cited a liberal judicial ethics expert who said Thomas is “undermining the administration of justice and the rule of law.”
From the Friday at noontime Andrea Mitchell Reports:
GARRETT HAAKE: On January 19th, the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s request to intervene and stop the January 6th Committee from accessing his records. Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone justice to dissent.
Now, a new New Yorker article is raising questions about Thomas’s wife’s conservative activism. One example: Ginni Thomas and other prominent conservatives signed a letter to Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, demanding that the House Republican Conference remove Congresswoman Cheney and Congressman Kinzinger due to, quote, “Their egregious actions as part of the House of Representatives’ January 6th Select Committee,” writing that “the actions of Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger on behalf of House Democrats have given supposedly bipartisan justification to an overtly partisan political persecution that brings disrespect to our country’s rule of law, legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong, and which demeans the standing of the House.”
Joining me now is Jane Mayer, chief Washington correspondent for The New Yorker and author of the new article “Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court?” So, Jane, thank you for being with us. I want to say off the top that Clarence and Ginni Thomas declined to be interviewed for your article and NBC has also reached out to Justice Thomas and his wife’s political lobbying firm, Liberty Consulting. We have not heard back. Your story lays out Ginni Thomas’s long history of conservative activism. Talk about what you found.
JANE MAYER: Well, I mean, she has been an issue for quite some time because she’s such a vocal activist in politics. And the court is supposed to be seen as, kind of, above politics. In fact, her husband has made a point of saying so.
But what I was looking at was her ties to issues directly in front of the court. And there are so many of them, it is astonishing and worrisome. So that I interviewed ethics experts on the law, people like Stephen Gillers, who really is probably the foremost expert on judicial ethics, who said that she is, in his words, “behaving horribly.” And he fears that it’s undermining the administration of justice and the rule of law and the image of the Supreme Court, which right now is handling some of the most explosive issues in front of the country, and also has a problem with public support at this point. It’s dwindled to its lowest rate. And this is worrisome at this point …
Brent Baker, vice president of research and publications for the Media Research Center, explains our weekly pick: “The news media/left-wing political industry in action. A far-left journalist with a long history of hostility toward Clarence Thomas writes a story to get Thomas and his conservative voice recused from cases, and MSNBC jumps to promote her message.”
Rating: THREE out of FIVE SCREAMS.
