Carl Bernstein Rips 'Rogue' Justice Clarence Thomas On Call For Respect Of Institutions
Famed journalist Carl Bernstein slammed “rogue” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday for demanding respect for U.S. government institutions after Thomas’ own wife worked to topple the results of the 2020 election.
After protests erupted over the news that the high court is poised to gut the landmark abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade, Thomas chided Americans for being incapable of “living with” rulings they don’t like and complained that a lack of faith in U.S. institutions “bodes ill for a free society.” He added that the court would not be “bullied” by the public.
On CNN’s “New Day” on Monday, Bernstein derided Thomas’ comments as “disingenuous” and “a little misguided — given particularly the role of his wife in the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement” and her efforts to overthrow an election.
“The wife of a Supreme Court justice doing what Ginni Thomas did is utterly unheard of in the history of the United States,” Bernstein told hosts Brianna Keilar and John Avlon.
“Justice Thomas, talking about [the] legitimacy of institutions — either the White House or the court itself — he should recuse himself, which he refuses to do, from any case involving the president of the United States and the election” because of the role his wife played, said Bernstein.
“There is a real failure of institutions, especially on the Supreme Court, by a rogue justice who would not say, ‘I’m going to step aside,’” Bernstein added. “Let’s look at what Ginni Thomas did ... and we have texts of what she was saying. It is crazy stuff ... encouraging the president of the United States, really, to stage a coup.”
In an even more chilling observation, Bernstein called former President Donald Trump the nation’s “first seditious president ... who staged a coup to stay in office and not allow the transfer of power to a duly elected president.”
Watch the full interview below.
Leonard Pitts
Tue, May 10, 2022
To the Honorable Clarence Thomas, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States:
Dear Sir:
Have you ever met your wife?
Yes, it’s an impudent question, but it seems justified by the speech you gave Friday at a judicial conference in Atlanta and a question-and-answer session that followed. In an obvious reference to the bombshell leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, you bemoaned that institutions are being “bullied” and said the judiciary is threatened if people are unwilling to “live with outcomes we don’t agree with.”
You said this despite the fact that your bride of 35 years, conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, made headlines earlier this year when it was revealed she schemed with the Trump White House to keep him in power despite his election defeat. She echoed his baseless claims of fraud and even joined the Jan. 6 mob that rallied to overturn the election, though she claims she broke off from them before they stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Mrs. Thomas, then, it might fairly be said, is a poster child for those who would bully institutions or refuse to live with outcomes they dislike. For you to raise those concerns with a straight face and no mention of her name suggests that either the two of you have not been properly introduced or that you are a man of staggering hypocrisy and deep intellectual dishonesty. One would hate to find those qualities in a man overseeing traffic court, much less in one sitting on the Supreme Court.
Here’s the thing, sir: There are rules. The adherence to them, the ability to trust them, is what allows a society to function. Some of the rules are written, others are not, but the fact that they aren’t makes them no less critical. One such unwritten rule is that the collegial confidentiality of the high court is sacrosanct. So yes, it’s unfortunate some leaker leaked.
But he or she is hardly the first person to violate the court’s unwritten norms. One of your colleagues occupies a seat stolen for him from President Obama. Another occupies a seat she was crammed into eight days before the 2020 election by the same Republicans who had said that nine months out was too close to Election Day 2016 to consider Obama’s nominee. Some transparently lied when they testified in confirmation hearings that they respected Roe as settled law. And really, sir, isn’t it a bit unseemly for the wife of a Supreme Court justice to be part of a conspiracy to overturn an election? Or for him to fail to recuse himself from any cases arising therefrom?
As Americans, we have traditionally respected Supreme Court rulings even when they were godawful, even when they set the nation back, because however dumb or dreadful they were, we considered the court itself an apolitical and duly constituted tribunal. In a word, it was legitimate. But in their bare knuckles, end-justifies-the-means approach to the court, conservatives have devastated that bit of civic faith.
Small wonder a September Gallup poll found approval of the court at 40%, the lowest Gallup has ever recorded, and down sharply from 58% the year before. One cringes to think where it stands right now. And one wonders: If the Court loses its legitimacy, can its authority be far behind?
In the face of that question, your issue is that an anonymous leaker violated confidentiality? Sir, maybe that person just wonders why he or she should be required to respect the rules.
It doesn’t seem like anyone else is.
Pitts
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