I wrote about the completely ridiculous Clarence Thomas controversy today for Politico:
The federal law on recusal says that a judge should recuse himself or herself when a spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.” A New York University law professor named Stephen Gillers told The New York Times that her texts mean that Ginni Thomas meets this standard: “She made herself part of the team and so she has an interest in the decisions of the court that could affect Trump’s goal of reversing the results.”
This is absurd. If a reader or a friend regularly texts me about National Review’s editorial policy — and it occasionally happens! — that doesn’t make him part of the National Review editorial team.
Ginni Thomas wasn’t party to any election-related litigation. She didn’t write an amicus brief in any of the litigation. She didn’t even give Meadows any legal advice, besides to keep Sidney Powell front and center (a very bad idea that wasn’t acted on).
Telling Meadows that Trump should avoid conceding, stay strong and allow time for a grassroots political army to build to challenge the results may have been foolhardy political advice, but it was political advice.
At the end of the day, Ginni Thomas didn’t have any more or any less interest in election-related litigation than any other Republican who believed Trump’s claims of fraud, and there were millions of them.