In an appearance on CNN on Sunday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) appeared to issue a threat to Justice Clarence Thomas if he does not recuse himself from participating in Supreme Court cases involving President Trump over efforts to remove him from the 2024 presidential election due to the “insurrection” clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
When asked by CNN State of the Union host Dana Bash if Thomas should recuse himself from Trump election cases because of his wife Ginni Thomas’ activism in support of Trump’s efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election, Raskin said, “He absolutely should recuse himself. The question is, what do we do if he doesn’t recuse himself?”
Congress has no constitutional role in deciding which justices hear cases on the Supreme Court. Raskin’s question can only answered by extra-judicial means.
Bash did not follow-up to ask Raskin what he meant. In the past few years Conservative Supreme Court Justices have been the targets of threats by Democrats, intimidating protests at their homes by leftist activists and an assassination attempt.
Raskin’s dog whistle echoed the threat by now Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) against Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch made on the steps of the Supreme Court in 2020:
In which Chuck Schumer threatens TWO sitting Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. pic.twitter.com/pA3mryeVK2
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) March 4, 2020
A gunman intent on assassinating Justice Kavanaugh was arrested outside his home in 2022.
Video clip of Raskin posted by the RNC:
DELUSIONAL: Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin says Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas “absolutely should recuse himself” from decisions on President Trump’s ballot access, saying “the question is, what do we do if he doesn’t?” pic.twitter.com/tI6hUYFWrg
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 31, 2023
Excerpt from CNN transcript:
BASH: Three of the sitting justices were appointed by Donald Trump. And, in addition to that, Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni, texted with Mark Meadows about the 2020 election in the lead-up to January 6, as you well know.
Should any of the justices recuse themselves if they take this up?
RASKIN: Well, finally, the Supreme Court has developed what they’re describing as a code of ethics.
It’s not binding, in the sense that they’re not going to anyone else. They could have gone to, for example, circuit court justices. You could have had state Supreme Court justices on a panel. But — so they’re deciding for themselves again whether they’re in violation of their code of ethics.
But I think anybody looking at this in any kind of dispassionate, reasonable way would say, if your wife was involved in the big lie and claiming that Donald Trump had actually won the presidential election and had been agitating for that and participating in the events leading up to January 6, that you shouldn’t be participating in…
BASH: So, he should recuse himself?
(CROSSTALK)
RASKIN: He should. Oh, he absolutely should recuse himself. The question is, what do we do if he doesn’t recuse himself?
BASH: How quickly do you think that the Supreme Court will weigh in on this, if they will at all? But I will — you assume that they will, right?
RASKIN: Yes.
I mean, under constitutional federalism, every state is ultimately going to control its own ballot access and access to candidates for the ballot. And that is obviously difficult when we’re talking about electing the president, who is the one official we have got in America who is supposed to represent the entire country, represent everybody.
And so I think that the urgency is for the Supreme Court to act. But I think it’s going to be tough for some of them, if they want to keep Trump on the ballot, if they’re falling for the argument that this is undemocratic. I mean, is it undemocratic that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer
Granholm can’t run for president because they weren’t born in the country? If you think about it, of all the forms of disqualification we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic, because it’s the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified.
In terms of your age or where you were born, that’s not up to you. But Donald Trump is in that tiny, tiny number of people who’ve essentially disqualified themselves.
Thomas has been the target of a campaign to force him off the Supreme Court by Democrats and activists in the media over his wife Ginni’s conservative activism and over phony ethics allegations.