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Post by Admin on Jan 28, 2022 19:41:14 GMT
New Yorker writer Jane Mayer discusses the conservative beliefs and influence of Ginni Thomas, an activist who's been associated with some groups involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. he case, which is being brought against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, is the latest potential conflict of interest involving Thomas and his wife Virginia Thomas. Ginni, as she is known, is a prominent rightwing activist who speaks out on a raft of issues that frequently come before the nation’s highest court. A one-person conservative powerhouse, she set up her own lobbying company Liberty Consulting in 2010. By her own description, she has “battled for conservative principles in Washington” for over 35 years. The challenge to the two universities’ race-conscious admissions policies is being brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA). Its leader Edward Blum has been a relentless opponent of affirmative action and voting rights laws.  His argument that race-based affirmative action is a quota system that discriminates against Asian students is framed with the supreme court’s newly emboldened rightwing majority in mind. A central player in that new six-justice conservative supermajority is Clarence Thomas, who is the longest-serving of the justices and at 73 will be the oldest once Stephen Breyer retires. Justice Thomas’s influence has soared in recent months with the rightward shift of the court following Donald Trump’s three nominations, to the extent that some pundits now dub him the unofficial chief justice of the court. SFFA’s lawsuit seeking to strike down affirmative action has received the enthusiastic backing of the conservative National Association of Scholars. It filed an amicus brief in support of the suit, accusing Harvard admissions officials of being prejudiced against Asian students and stereotyping them as “uninteresting, uncreative and one-dimensional”. Ginni Thomas sits on the advisory board of the National Association of Scholars. Observers are concerned that her position with a group that has intervened in the affirmative action case could present appearances of conflict of interest. |
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Post by Admin on Mar 25, 2022 17:27:48 GMT
 Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife sent a series of texts to a top aide of then-President Donald Trump pushing to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a new report claims. Conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas allegedly exchanged 29 texts with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, the Washington Post and CBS News reported. The texts came as the former president’s team said it was ready to go all the way to the Supreme Court to contest the election result, leading up to and after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that temporarily disrupted Congress’ certification of Biden’s win over Trump. “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” Thomas wrote in Nov. 10, 2020, message after most media outlets called the election for Biden, according to the Post.  “You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” Thomas never mentions her husband or the court in the messages, which were among the more than 2,300 turned over by Meadows to the House select committee investigating the riot, the Post said. But the messages allegedly include her making reference to “The Biden crime family” and urging Meadows to continue the fight. A final message sent four days after Jan. 6 laments what Thomas calls “the end of Liberty.” |
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Post by Admin on Mar 25, 2022 20:05:37 GMT
January 6 committee has text messages between Supreme Court justice's wife and Trump adviser
44,906 views Mar 26, 2022 The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 riot has obtained text messages between former President Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows and Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.#CNN #News
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Post by Admin on Mar 26, 2022 1:38:26 GMT
Ginni Thomas pushed White House to fight 2020 election results. What are the implications?
8,037 views Mar 26, 2022 The House Select Committee is looking at thousands of text messages given by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows. At issue are 29 texts between Meadows and Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in which she pushed the White House to fight 2020 election results. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, who has reported on Ginni Thomas's advocacy, joins Lisa Desjardins to discuss.
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Post by Admin on Mar 26, 2022 18:41:41 GMT
 Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent text messages urging former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to act to overturn the 2020 presidential election — furthering then-President Donald Trump's debunked claims that the free and fair vote was marred by nonexistent fraud, according to copies of the messages obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News. The 29 messages the pair exchanged came in the weeks after Biden won the election in November 2020, when Trump and his top allies were still saying they planned to go to the Supreme Court to have its results voided. While the texts do not directly reference Virginia Thomas' husband or the Supreme Court, she previously admitted to attending Trump's “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. After news of the text message exchange broke on March 24, several people on social media, including U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, began calling for Justice Thomas to be impeached from the Supreme Court. There were also claims online that suggested the justice, who was discharged from the hospital on March 25 after a nearly weeklong stay for an infection, would quietly resign due to health reasons. Recent online searches also show people are wondering if a Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached. The United States Constitution gives the House of Representatives the sole power to impeach a federal official, such as a Supreme Court justice, for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, and it makes the Senate the sole court for impeachment trials, according to the U.S. House’s History, Art & Archives website. The White House explains Supreme Court justices can remain in office until they resign, pass away, or are impeached and convicted by Congress. The only Supreme Court justice to ever be impeached was Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1805, according to the Supreme Court. However, while the House of Representatives passed Articles of Impeachment against Chase in 1804, he was acquitted by the Senate and remained on the court until his death in 1811. Chase, who had served on the Supreme Court since 1796, was a “staunch Federalist with a volcanic personality” who refused to tone down his “bitter partisan rhetoric” after Jeffersonian Republicans gained control of Congress in 1801, the U.S. Senate explains on its website. At the urging of President Thomas Jefferson, Rep. John Randolph of Virginia orchestrated impeachment proceedings against Chase, and on March 12, 1804, the House voted to impeach him. They accused Chase of constantly promoting his political agenda on the bench, refusing to dismiss biased jurors, and excluding or limiting defense witnesses in two politically sensitive cases. On Jan. 4, 1805, Chase appeared before members of the Senate to answer to the charges and declared that he was being tried for his political convictions rather than for any real crime. During the trial, which began on Feb. 4, 1805, Chase's defense team convinced several senators that the justice’s conduct did not warrant his removal from office, according to the U.S. Senate website. On March 1, 1805, the Senate acquitted Chase on all counts and he resumed his seat on the bench, where he stayed until his death on June 19, 1811. “The Senate’s failure to remove Chase from the bench was seen as a victory for judicial independence and established the precedent that a judge could not be removed as a result of stating political views from the bench,” according to Oyez, a free multimedia archive from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII), Justia, and the Chicago-Kent College of Law. |
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