Ilhan Omar: Impeach Clarence Thomas because of wife's texts

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. (Video screenshot)

Seizing on a Washington Post story by Bob Woodward and Robert Acosta, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has joined calls by her progressive allies for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign or be impeached.

The Post story follows a New Yorker report in February contending the political activism of Thomas' wife – Virginia "Ginni" Thomas – poses a conflict of interest. Titled "Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show," the Post story is built on the assumption that Donald Trump had no justification for raising concerns about vote fraud and that he was not pursuing the constitutional process to validate the presidential vote.

Omar on Friday was commenting on a tweet by progressive podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen noting Clarence Thomas was the only no vote in an 8-1 decision to allow the release of documents related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot showing plans to order the military to seize voting machines.

"Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached," Omar wrote.

Featuring leaked texts obtained by the House Select Committee probing Jan. 6, Woodward and Acosta write that Virginia Thomas "repeatedly pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in a series of urgent text exchanges in the critical weeks after the vote."

All of the texts, except for one dated Jan. 10, 2021, were sent between Nov. 4 and Nov. 24, 2020. During that time, Trump and his allies began mounting a case, beginning with the inexplicable stoppage of the vote count in key Democratic strongholds of battleground states when Trump had a considerable lead. This month, a taxpayer-funded investigation of alleged vote fraud by former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman concluded the state's 2020 presidential election should be decertified.

A progressive activist group called Take Back the Court Action Fund that contends Republicans "stole the Supreme Court to obstruct progress and undermine democracy," issued a statement Thursday night demanding Thomas immediately resign.

"Given that Justice Thomas has already made known he won't recuse himself from cases related to his wife's right-wing activism, and the damning evidence of his wife's involvement in this attack on our democracy, Thomas is clearly unfit to serve on the nation's highest court," said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, the group's executive director.

Should Clarence Thomas be impeached because of his wife's texts?

The call for Thomas to resign comes as the Supreme Court deliberates over an abortion case that could overturn Roe v. Wade.

WND reported in February on the lengthy exposé in The New Yorker titled "Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court?". The author, Jane Mayer, doesn't hide her disdain for Ginni Thomas's conservative political views, labeling them "far-right." She sets out to argue that Clarence Thomas is violating fundamental rules of judicial ethics, while acknowledging that Supreme Court justices are not bound by the rules regarding conflicts of interest to which lower-court federal judges must adhere.

In its story Thursday, the Post doesn't present any evidence that Ginni Thomas' activism had anything to do with the no vote of Clarence Thomas, an "originalist" justice who has been ranked by various metrics as the "most conservative" member of the court.

Earlier this month, Thomas responded to the New Yorker's accusations in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, explaining she did not help organize the White House rally that preceded the Capitol riot. She said she attended the rally, but got cold and left early. Moreover, she maintained, her involvement with the event has no bearing on the work of her husband.

"It's racist to even ask questions of a black person going on the Supreme Court."

"Let's impeach the only black person on the Supreme Court."

Same people. Same week.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) March 25, 2022

In February, attorney Kelly Shackelford, who is quoted in the New Yorker article, told WND he sees the charges against the Thomases as an act of "desperation" and "totally baseless, if you look at the law and how we do things." A former clerk for Clarence Thomas, Carrie Severino, told ABC News that there are "always attempts on the left to manufacture grounds to recuse conservative justices from cases."

On Friday, investigative reporter Julie Kelly compared the conflict-of-interest charge against Clarence Thomas with the evidence on Hunter Biden's laptop that President Biden is compromised with China, Russia, Ukraine and many other countries.

"Wake me up when Ginni Thomas turns into a porn-addicted crackhead who accepts millions of dollars from corrupt figures overseas and funnels a portion of the illicit bankroll to a sitting vice president and/or presidential candidate and/or president," she wrote on Twitter.

Kelly has reported extensively on Jan. 6 and the evidence that FBI informants and left-wing agitators turned a peaceful protest into a riot, sabotaging the constitutional process underway inside the building of ensuring the vote was valid.

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