TALE OF TWO WOMEN

Americans got a unique view of the high drama in the Court recently, all focused on two women, one of whom—Ketanji Brown Jackson—will be appointed as a justice in the top court while the other is married to a justice of the highest court

- Kenneth Tiven

VIRGINIA Thomas, whose husband is Justice Clarence Thomas, was revealed to have played a role as a right wing organizer supporting Donald Trump's fraudulent efforts to stay in office despite losing the 2020 presidential election. Is this consistent with the behaviour expected of a Supreme Court judge's spouse? That answer will be difficult to agree upon, but the details confirm the alarming behaviour of Trump's senior staff and friends as he lost the White House.

There is a code of conduct for all federal court judges and their families, except for the Supreme Court justices.

The work and political life of Justice Thomas' wife has been questionable for much of the three decades that he has been on the Court. It is the e-mails and text evidence submitted to the House Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol that has blown this into an issue greater than mere appearance. The emails from Virginia Thomas, who prefers “Ginni” as a first name, were between her and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, just days after the election. These were found in material subpoenaed by the House Committee probing the January 6 insurrection.

To prevent these documents being turned over, the Trump administration went to court seeking an injunction and it was judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the expedited Appeals Court level, who wrote the denial of the White House claim of immunity, saying, “The president is not a king." At the Supreme Court, only Justice Thomas voted in favour of President Trump's claim.

There was evidence within those documents that showed how intimately involved Ginni Thomas was in the Big Lie campaign pushed by the White House as well as the January rally that preceded a riot on Capitol Hill.