The Daily - The Political Lives of Clarence and Ginni Thomas

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

A series of text messages released in the past week show how Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, urged White House officials to push to overturn the result of the 2020 election.There has never been a spouse of a sitting justice who has been as overt a political activist as Ms. Thomas — and that presents a real conundrum for the court.Guest: Jo Becker, an investigative reporter for The New York Times. Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? The Daily is working on a special episode memorializing those we have lost to the coronavirus. If you would like to share their name on the episode, please RECORD A VOICE MEMO and send it to us at [e-mail]. You can find more information and specific instructions here.Background reading: The long crusade of the Thomases has taken them from the fringes of the conservative movement to the very center of it.In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Ginni Thomas was involved in a range of efforts to keep President Donald J. Trump in power.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. A series of text messages released in the last week show Ginny Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, urging White House officials to push to overturn the result of the 2020 election. The texts prompted calls from Democrats for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from cases that involved that election. Today, investigative reporter Joe Becker on the story behind those texts and how the Thomases went from the fringes of the conservative movement to the very center of it. It's Wednesday, March 30th. March 30th.

Joe, we've been hearing a lot about texts sent by Ginny Thomas about overturning the 2020 election. You're an investigative reporter for The Times, and you were already covering the Thomases, looking into their backgrounds, their lives, before these revelations came out. What were you trying to understand about them? Well, we started an investigation into the Thomases more than nine months ago. And we did that because there's been a kind of open secret in Washington about Ginny and Clarence Thomas. For decades, the two of them have been waging this sort of battle, he from the bench and she from the political trenches, against what they see as the liberal order. And what's fascinating about this joint battle is that since the founding of the nation, there has never been the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice who has been as overt a political activist as Ginny Thomas has. And it presents a real conundrum for the court. Ginny Thomas has insisted that she and her husband

operate in separate professional lanes. But what we found is that those lanes, in fact, merge with notable frequency. And we really wanted to kind of delve in more deeply to understand just what kind of conflicts that represents. Well, take us through their history. How did the Thomases meet? They met at a conservative conference. And it seems like, you know, in their telling,

it was almost love at first sight. And the two of them converged at a moment when both were deeply involved in conservative politics. He cut his teeth during the Reagan administration, when President Reagan appointed him the chairperson of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. After serving there, he was appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is a stepping stone to the Supreme Court. And, you know, around this time, Ginny was sort of toiling in the political trenches. After earning her law degree, she worked for a Republican congressman and then later at the Chamber of Commerce. And so they sort of come together in

this moment and they end up getting married and boom, you know, he's nominated to the Supreme Court. And what happens next, I think, is what really shapes them both as a couple and in terms of their joint philosophy. And what is that, Jo? So when Judge Clarence Thomas of the D.C. Circuit was nominated to the Supreme Court in the 90s, you know, he faced what was then seen as one of the most bitter confirmation hearings in American history. And the reason that that was the case was that a woman named Anita Hill, with whom he had worked, accused him of sexual harassment. And that came to sort of dominate the hearings. And it's interesting, you know, he apparently did not watch her testimony.

Ginny Thomas watched it for him. Wow. Seething the whole time, never believed it. And in their telling, it was an out-and-out attack, this kind of smear campaign by the left. You know, one of their close friends said, you cannot understand them without understanding how this moment imprinted on them. And from that moment forward, the two of them embarked on what one can call the Thomas's War. This sort of ideological war against liberalism that they saw both at the court and in the political sphere.

And Jo, how did we see that playing out in the years that followed? Well, Justice Thomas did get confirmed in 1991. And in the years since, he's often hearkened back to this hearing. And he once said that it really freed him to just write the opinions that he wanted. You know, there are some justices that they get on the court, they're looking to be part of the majority. Justice Thomas was never like that. His early years on the court were distinguished by, you know, vigorous dissents and iconoclastic opinions. You know, he staked out these sort of lonely oppositional role as a dissenter, you know. In a Second Amendment case in 1997, he opened the door

to future challenges to local gun laws. In a 2000 Nebraska abortion case, he assailed Roe v. Wade, which he called, you know, grievously wrong. And a friend of his who I interviewed said, you know, it's not like he wanted to labor in the minority forever, but he was sort of tilling the ground. He said, in other words, you know, the field's not ready for things to blossom or flourish, but he's doing what he can to prepare it. And I think what he meant by that was that he was sort of sowing the seeds so that one day these lone dissent decisions might become the majority when the court went from where it was for much of his career, which was closely divided five to four, to a more robustly conservative court. And what's Ginny Thomas doing during this time? to a more robustly conservative court. And what's Ginny Thomas doing during this time?

So in the meantime, Ginny Thomas remained politically active, often pursuing, you know, very similar, if not the same goals. I mean, she also wanted and worked towards seeing Roe v. Wade overturned, for instance. So her work very much coincided with what the court was doing or what both of them wanted to see the court doing. But, you know, both of them at this time were, you know, on the fringes. I mean, he was a Supreme Court justice, of course, but from the outside, not a hugely influential one, since he was often, you know, just writing in dissent. And she was very active among

very conservative social circles. But, you know, her brand of republicanism, you know, sort of the Tea Party brand, had not yet come to sort of dominate the Republican Party as it does today. Got it. But, well, from the outside, one might conclude that they weren't, you know, hugely influential at that moment in sort of shaping policy or shaping majority judicial opinions. On the inside of deeply conservative grassroots base type organizations, they were like a rock star couple. A rock star couple. What do you mean by that? Well, take the Eagle Forum, which is a deeply conservative organization run by Phyllis Schaftle, a conservative

activist who fought against the Equal Rights Amendment and was vehemently anti-abortion. When I looked around for somebody very special to have as our guest at our 25th Eagle Council, there was really only one person I wanted. And in 1996, Phyllis Schaefle invited Clarence Thomas to headline an event there. And I just have admired Clarence Thomas for so long. He's better than Rehnquist. He's better than Scalia. He's just wonderful.

What higher praise can I give you? Clarence and Ginny, both of them, you know, over the years have received awards from this group for what they had done for the movement. But I do have a toast for Clarence Thomas, which I will read to you now. And when Clarence received it in 1996, Phyllis Schaftley even personally wrote a poem lauding him as the best justice on the Supreme Court. No high court justice shows such promise as our favorite Clarence Thomas. You're a jurist for the ages who sends liberals into rages. As we watch you face the strife, we thank God you're there for life. And by the way, in Thomas's speech, after accepting the award from the group, Thank you all. Thank you, fellas.

he talked about how happy he was that he and his wife could attend the ceremony together. We're sort of like nuns in that regard. We like to travel as a pair. But it's always a delight to have her here. We're truly best friends. And the best times that I spend in life are spent with her. Was there any reaction in Washington in those years? I mean, to the Thomases being so overtly political? Well, a lot of it was happening behind the scenes.

I mean, we only recently discovered the details around their involvement in the Eagle Forum, for instance. But questions really began bubbling up during the Obama years. Now, she thinks Obama's health care law is unconstitutional. Now, she thinks Obama's health care law is unconstitutional. And particularly around Ginni Thomas' activism against his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. Today's critics are renewing their call for Justice Clarence Thomas to disqualify himself. Why? Because his wife, Virginia, Gin Jenny Thomas, is a major lobbyist for conservative groups. And during this period, Common Cause, a watchdog group, reviewed Justice Thomas's financial disclosure filings. In 2003, she made $121,000. In 2004, $131,000. On and on down to

2007, this is the income she made from the Heritage Foundation. And found that he'd failed to disclose his wife's income from the Heritage Foundation. The foundation is a powerful conservative think tank, and it had been advocating against the Affordable Health Care Act, and in fact wanted to see it overturned by the Supreme Court. Her husband is probably going to have to make a call on that. Democrats, well, they think that's not right. Justice Thomas ended up amending his financial disclosures.

The law is very clear when a judge must must recuse himself from consideration of a case. And it's when you have a financial interest in the outs of the outcome of a case. And it specifically refers to your spouse. In the wake of that scandal, more than 70 House Democrats asked the justice to recuse himself from cases involving the Affordable Health Care Act because of Ginni Thomas' work. It's not about his philosophy. It's about what he's done and the role his wife has chosen to play here.

He just has no business hearing this case. But that never happened. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito issued an unusual joint dissent, united in opposition. They said the law should be invalidated in its entirety under any constitutional provision. So it sounds like by this point, there are these growing concerns that Justice Thomas and his wife might have some uncomfortable overlap in their work. But the stakes around this were probably lower, right? I mean, as you said, they're still kind of on the fringes in these years. So when did that change for them?

Absolutely. With the election of President Donald J. Trump, that changed everything for them. Why? What happened? Well, when Trump enters the White House, you know, this is really the Thomas's moment. Their brand of conservative politics is at the center of the Republican Party and shared by the president. And shortly after President Trump took office, he embarked on a kind of courtship of Justice Thomas. During the campaign, he'd been intrigued by the fact that Justice Thomas, when he would mention his name, would often get more applause than President Trump did himself. And he talked to a friend during the transition about it and expressed, you know, a desire to get to know Justice Thomas. So part of that courtship was about that. But it

was also trying to gain the favor of Justice Thomas because he's a conservative justice who's ideologically aligned with the campaign promises that Trump had made, promises like overturning Roe v. Wade. And so, you know, Trump starts to invite Justice Thomas to the White House. He invites him for dinner. He has his clerks come over and do a photo op with him. But then there's this moment when Justice Thomas is invited to an Oval Office meeting with the president. And they expect it to be a one-on-one. But Ginny shows up with him uninvited. And at this moment, there's sort of a clear message to the White House staff that this couple is a package deal. Where he goes, she goes to.

Yes. And so shortly after this lunch, which was in 2018, Ginny uses that entree to start asking for her own meetings with the president. And she essentially gets an all-access pass to the Oval. She's on a short list of people that can just drop by. And she begins bringing her conservative friends in for meetings and making consistent policy and personnel suggestions that so aggravated AIDS that, you know, one called her a wrecking ball. But the president, you know, who had, of course, lots of business before the Supreme Court, stood by her and continued to allow her access. And Ginny Thomas's influence only grew with time.

In March of 2020, an old friend from Ginny's Tea Party days, Mark Meadows, is named chief of staff to the White House. If before, many of the president's top aides had been skeptical of Ms. Thomas' suggestion and told the president as much, in Meadows, she had more of an ally and fellow traveler. Ginny could call him up any time on his private cell, and White House sources told us that she blew up his phone a lot. This is a different America.

And so we're called to think differently and recognize the environment we're in. We're up against a fascist left. And through this all, it seems clear that Ginny has never stopped seeing her work as a war on the liberal left. The left is saying they want to kill people who are voting for Kavanaugh. It's unbelievable. In one speech during the Trump era, she's talking about the Kavanaugh. It's unbelievable. In one speech during the Trump era, she's talking about the Kavanaugh hearings. I thought it couldn't get worse than Clarence's, but it did. But she's talking about so much else. They're also controlling the media and corporations

and Hollywood and education. And we're in the minority in our country. The deep state is serious and it's resisting President Trump. It's clear that she still sees this as a full-blown battle, one that conservatives needed to wage with ferocity. And in a way, the Thomases have never been more powerful in this battle. Over the course of his presidency, Trump had added three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, decisively tipping the balance to the right. And so Justice Thomas is the senior most conservative justice on a court with a strong conservative majority. And Ginny Thomas is, in essence, an activist with a direct phone line to the White House. But in November 2020, all of that is put into jeopardy when Donald J. Trump loses the election. And that's what leads us to the really shocking revelations about Ginny Thomas, the ones concerning her efforts to overturn that outcome in the weeks that followed.

We'll be right back So Jo, tell us about these new revelations So when we started this investigation we in part wanted to better understand exactly what Ginny Thomas' role was in the effort to overturn the election. Was she a bystander, a cheerleader, or something more? And what we uncovered in the course of our reporting was a lot of evidence that Ginny Thomas was deeply involved in the effort to overturn the election. The first thing that we found out was that she sat on a nine-member board of CNP Action, which was a conservative group that helped advance to

stop the steel movement and was a keynote in the Trump's post-election messaging machine. And we learned that, among other things, that they had sent around memos to their influential membership, urging them to contact state legislators and key swing states that Biden had won and to urge them to appoint alternative electors. Right. This was the famous stop the steal effort that sprung up after Donald Trump lost the election. the Steele effort that sprung up after Donald Trump lost the election. And what you found is that this group, CNP Action, was involved in that. Right. And she was a part of that campaign. And as our reporting continued, we learned that wasn't even the extent of it. We learned from one of the organizers that in the lead up to the January 6th, March protesting the certification of Joe Biden's election, that she played an actual role in mediating between organizations that sort of had been feuding so that everybody could speak, you know, on the same page on January

6th. And it was startling. And Joe, does that mean she helped facilitate the January 6th rally? Yes. I mean, she was involved in the run-up to January 6th. And after our story ran, you know, Jeannie Thomas went into, I would call it, damage control mode. She went to a friendly conservative publication. She sat down for an interview and she acknowledged that she actually had attended the rally, but then tried to kind of say, yeah, but I didn't really have anything to do with it. And I wasn't talking to any organizers. Okay. So it's now clear that on top of whatever organizing Ginny Thomas did for the January 6th rally, she also attended it. Exactly. And then we begin with an exclusive CBS News and Washington Post investigation

that uncovered text messages between the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and President Trump's top aide. Boom came the revelations about the text that she and Mark Meadows had been exchanging. The stunning text messages detail an extraordinary relationship between Ginni Thomas and then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. These are messages that were unearthed as part of the January 6th congressional investigation. She texted Meadows, help this great president stand firm. The majority knows Biden and the left is attempting the greatest heist of our history. And they show that just days after the 2020 election, Ginni Thomas was urging him and the administration

to work to overturn the results of the election. Ginni Thomas writes, make a plan. And making concrete suggestions about what they should do. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down. Thomas wrote to Meadows, we are living through what feels like the end of America. Perhaps most telling of all was even after the January 6th march turned violent. Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in a listening mode to see where to fight with our teams. You know, she urged Meadows to fight on. And the reaction to these texts was outrage. The entire integrity

of the court is on the line here. Senator Amy Klobuchar, for instance. You have the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice advocating for overturning a legal election to the sitting president's chief of staff. Went on one of the Sunday programs and called her messages and her actions unbelievable. So not only should he recuse himself, but this Supreme Court badly needs ethics rules. There were calls for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from any case that might relate to this election or the investigation into the attempts to overturn it.

But why is the outrage turning to Justice Thomas? I mean, all of this is Ginny's political activism. It's her actions, not his, right? Right, sure. I mean, Ginny Thomas is a private citizen and she is free to express her First Amendment views however she wants. But this is different. By making herself sort of part of the team and advising them on strategy,

she has an interest in the outcome. And that is an issue for Justice Thomas, because Justice Thomas has already ruled on a case involving the investigation into January 6th. And what was that case? It was a ruling in January. President Trump had asked the court to block release of White House records concerning the attack, and the court rejected the request. But Justice Thomas was the sole dissenter in that opinion. So you're saying that Justice Thomas has already ruled in a case about which communications the White House has to turn over when it comes to January 6th. But do we know if those texts from Ginny Thomas to Mark Meadows were part of that case? We don't know. I mean, Meadows is required to turn over all of his records to the archive. So if they weren't, they should have been. And the other

question is, what other communications might there be? Who else was she communicating with at the White House? We know, for instance, that she was communicating with Jared Kushner because she texted Mark Meadows that she had been in touch. And Jared Kushner's emails definitely should be part of the National Archives and part of the records that people are required to save. We don't know what, if anything, Justice Thomas knew about Jeanne Thomas's actions and communications. But that uncertainty is driving calls that he needs to recuse himself from any case involving the election and especially the January 6th investigation. What are the rules on recusal here?

Well, all federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, are subject to a federal law on recusal. And the law says that any justice shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned. And then a more specific provision concerning relatives, including spouses, also could apply. It says that they should not participate in proceedings in which their spouse has an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding. But there's been questions over time about the constitutionality of the recusal law. And really, ultimately, it's up to the Supreme Court justices to police themselves. So they basically decide whether or not their actions or the actions of

their spouse requires recusal. So even if the court is supposed to be policing itself, it sounds like what Democrats are saying is that this is a really clear-cut case for Justice Thomas, that he should be recusing himself. Yeah, and it's not just the conclusion of Democrats. In the wake of all of these revelations, legal ethicists have weighed in, and they say that if there's ever a clear case about recusal, this is one of them. But, Jo, is there an argument to be made that Justice Thomas didn't need to recuse himself? I mean, what's the case on the other side? Well, Justice Thomas has not said anything about any of these revelations. Friends and supporters of Justice Thomas have made the argument that

just because his wife is out there expressing her political views, which are protected by the First Amendment, doesn't mean that the justice will rule her way and that her political views do not shape his opinions. And in fact, there's a great historical example about this where Justice Scalia's wife was deeply conservative and was very angered by a ruling that he made. He joined with liberals in defending the right to burn flags. And she protested that by marching around their dinner table that evening and singing, it's a grand old flag at the top of her lungs. The difference here

though, is that Justice Thomas ruled exactly the way that his wife would have wanted in the cases that have come before the court involving this election. So where does all of this leave the Thomases now? Well, I think in a very unclear position at the moment. The January 6th committee is indicating that it will ask Ginny Thomas to come in and testify, which in and of itself is extraordinary. I mean, you either are going to have the spectacle of the wife of a Supreme Court justice testifying about her actions in an effort to overturn the election before Congress, or the spectacle of the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice refusing to voluntarily come in and testify. Meanwhile, Justice Thomas remains on the court where a bunch of cases involving January 6th are headed potentially his way. Among them is a case involving John Eastman, a former clerk of Justice Thomas's who is the architect of the kind of legal

strategy that posited that Vice President Pence had the power to simply declare Trump the victor. Just this week, a federal court ordered him to turn over all communications that he had with the White House and others involving January 6th and the effort to overturn the election. So these questions around recusal aren't going to be going away anytime soon. I guess I'm still left wondering, you know, how much to make of this. Because it's not really that obvious to me that Justice Thomas knowingly crossed some bright red line. It looks bad, yes, but, you know, his rulings haven't actually changed any of the outcomes regarding the election. So how should I be thinking about this? I think that the reason that legal ethicists, you know, are weighing in, you know, on one side of the space saying he absolutely should have recused is

the court was set up as the weakest branch of government. And Alexander Hamilton wrote, you know, that it has neither sword nor purse. In other words, it doesn't have a military to enforce its will. It doesn't have the power of the pocketbook to buy its will. The only thing that it has is the public's goodwill, the belief that the court is above politics. And that's why so many justices have steered far, far clear of the line that ethicists believe that Justice Thomas crossed.

Because if people don't trust it, it doesn't have anything. Exactly. Jo, thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met face-to-face for the first time in weeks and made the most progress in diplomacy since the war started, even as fighting continued unabated. After lengthy negotiations in Istanbul,

Ukrainian officials said their country was ready to declare itself permanently neutral, meaning it would not join NATO or host foreign troops. They also proposed a 15-year negotiating process for Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula seized by Russia in 2014, and said Ukraine was ready to rule out trying to retake it by force. Russia, meanwhile, has pledged to drastically scale back its military activity around Kyiv to, quote, increase mutual trust. I don't read anything into it until I see what their actions are. We'll see if they follow through on what they're suggesting. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, President Biden cautioned against taking Russia's pledge at face value.

We're going to continue to keep strong the sanctions. We're going to continue to provide the Ukrainian military with the capacity to defend themselves. And federal regulators authorized second booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines on Tuesday for people 50 and older and for people 12 and older who have immune deficiencies. The move came after the Biden administration decided it should bolster waning immunity in older Americans.

Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Ricky Nowetzki, Chelsea Daniel, and Muj Zaydi, with help from Aastha Chaturvedi. It was edited by Mark George and M.J. Davis-Lynn, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Danny Hakim. Our theme music is by Jim Bumberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.