Raskin: Clarence Thomas ‘Absolutely’ Must Recuse Himself from Trump Ballot Cases

Now that Colorado and Maine have disqualified Donald Trump from their 2024 ballots, citing the 14th Amendment, the case will most likely go to the Supreme Court. But Rep. Jamie Raskin said Sunday that Justice Clarence Thomas “absolutely should recuse himself” from these upcoming rulings because of his wife’s involvement in Jan. 6 and the fake electors scheme.

The 14th Amendment states that anyone who “engaged in insurrection” or gave “aid and comfort” to insurrectionists is disqualified from holding future office. Raskin and seven fellow Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee authored a letter to Thomas earlier this month calling for his recusal.

“It was actually two very conservative legal scholars who wrote the best, most authoritative law review article on the whole thing, saying that Donald Trump is clearly disqualified from being on the ballot because he participated in insurrection,” Raskin said.

As the case likely heads to the Supreme Court, Ginni Thomas’ participation in efforts to subvert the 2020 election once again raises questions about recusal. Ginni Thomas is a far-right activist who not only attended the rally that immediately preceded the attack on the Capitol, she also pushed the White House to overturn the election and pressed 29 Arizona state lawmakers to override the popular vote by selecting Trump loyalists as electors.

“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,” Raskin told Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union.

“So he should recuse himself?” Bash asked.

“He absolutely should recuse himself. The question is, what do we do if he doesn’t recuse himself?” Raskin said.

Raskin also addressed the Supreme Court’s vague new code of ethics, announced in the wake of the news that Thomas and his wife received lavish vacations and gifts from Nazi-obsessed billionaire and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, including Crow purchasing the home where the justice’s mother lives and paying for their grandnephew’s private boarding school tuition.

“Finally, the Supreme Court has developed what they’re describing as a code of ethics,” the congressman said. “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. So they’re deciding for themselves again whether they’re in violation of their code of ethics.”

The new code states that justices should recuse themselves when “The Justice or Justice’s spouse…is known by the Justice:…(iii) to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding; or (iv) likely to be a material witness in the proceeding.”

While some (mostly Republicans) have criticized Colorado and Maine for removing Trump from the ballot because it allows him to adopt a martyr stance, Raskin pointed out that while Trump rarely misses an opportunity to paint himself as a victim, that shouldn’t stop the Constitution from being enforced.

“If he loses [the 2024 election], he will feel himself a martyr there, and he will try to overturn the election result again,” Raskin said. “So I don’t think we can run scared from Donald Trump. We have got to enforce our Constitution. And that certainly was the design of the framers, and that’s what they would have us do.”

More from Rolling Stone

• Trump Is Already Accusing DeSantis of Rigging the Iowa Caucuses

• Billionaires Are Hoarding Trillions in Untaxed Wealth. They Want the Supreme Court to Keep It That Way

• The Constitutional Crisis is Real. Here's How It Will Play Out

Best of Rolling Stone

• The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign

• Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal

• The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence