Justices Thomas and Alito ignored calls for recusal in the Jan. 6 case
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. denied requests to dismiss their case but took part in the case, siding with a member of the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Legal ethics experts have said the activities of the judges’ wives raised serious questions about their impartiality.
Virginia Thomas, better known as Ginny, helped orchestrate the effort to overturn the 2020 election. “Biden and the left are attempting the greatest heist in our history,” Ms. Thomas wrote in a text message to Mark Meadows, President Donald J. Trump’s chief of staff, during the tense weeks between the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack.
Judge Thomas has made no public explanation for staying on the case, and he has participated in other cases arising from the 2021 election and attack. But he recused himself from a case involving John Eastman in October , a conservative lawyer who had advised Trump. Judge Thomas, for whom Eastman had worked as a law clerk, gave no reasons for his decision to disqualify himself from that case.
Justice Alito has been more candid. He explained in a letter to Democratic lawmakers in May why he did not withdraw from the case after The New York Times reported that flags used to sign “Stop the Steal” had been hung at his homes in Virginia and New Jersey. movement to support.
The judge said his wife, Martha-Ann, was responsible. “My wife loves flying flags,” he wrote. “Not me. She was solely responsible for installing flagpoles at our house and holiday home and has flown a wide variety of flags over the years.”
The court recently adopted a code of conduct for judges. This code allows individual judges to make their own decisions regarding recusals.
One provision of the code states that “a judge is presumed to be impartial and has a duty to sit unless disqualified.”
A second provision states that “a judge must disqualify himself in proceedings in which the judge’s impartiality could reasonably be called into question, that is to say, where an impartial and reasonable person aware of all the relevant circumstances would doubt whether the judge could discharge his or her duties fairly.”
The flags displayed at his property, Judge Alito wrote, did not require him to recuse himself from the case. “A reasonable person not motivated by political or ideological considerations or by a desire to influence the outcome of cases before the Supreme Court,” he wrote, “would conclude that this event does not meet the applicable standard for denial. ”
He wrote that he indeed had a duty to handle the case.
