Ana Navarro to Clarence Thomas on ‘The View’: If He “Can’t Recuse,” He Should Think About “Resigning”

If you cannot impeach a Supreme Court justice, then what can you do when you find out after the fact that Clarence Thomas voted to protect his wife’s text messages with the White House about the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol from going public ?

The revelations that Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had sent at least 20 texts to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in a futile effort to overturn the 2020 election, did not sit well with the ladies on The View.

The discovered text exchanges included Ginni Thomas begging Meadows “do not concede” the election, claiming the left was attempting the “greatest heist in history.” Clarence Thomas was the lone justice who sided with Trump’s bid to withhold his documents from the Congressional committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

“I don’t understand how this isn’t a problem not just optically, but in the rule books,” said Sara Haines, adding later: “How is it that a Supreme Court justice’s wife can be one text away from the chief of staff of the President of the United States?”

“It’s a clear conflict, and he should’ve recused himself from any case dealing with this, and we’ve said it before. But there are no real consequences for this,” replied Sunny Hostin, The View‘s resident legal expert on the panel, claiming the Supreme Court doesn’t have rules in place to mandate judicial behavior like this.  “Justice Thomas would either have to resign, he would have to be impeached, which has only happened one time in the history of the court. I think it was in the early 1800s.”

But impeachment would be hard to prove, Hostin said.

Ana Navarro agreed with Hostin that the problem is the lack of oversight. “They get to police themselves,” Navarro said. “And ironically enough, just two days ago, Ted Cruz asked nominee Ketanji [Brown Jackson] if she would recuse herself in the Harvard case… And she said she absolutely would. So I would ask Ted Cruz, I would ask Lindsey Graham, I would ask all those Republican members of a judiciary and all the mouth pieces on Fox, what would you all have done if Ketanji’s husband was texting [Joe Biden’s chief] 29 times in 2 months, musing about an insurrection against the democracy of the United States… It’s such hypocrisy!”

Behar found the whole confirmation process for Brown Jackson, especially the Republican opposition, akin to ridiculousness you’d find on Saturday Night Live. “The hypocrisy is beyond belief,” she said.

Hostin began reading from some of Ginni Thomas’s texts, and urged viewers to read them all for themselves, especially the texts she sent after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. “She said she left because it was too cold, yet she told the chief of staff… ‘we have teams that are ready to fight.’ That’s scary,” Hostin said.

Clarence Thomas just got released from the hospital Friday after spending a week hospitalized with an undisclosed infection, and missing oral arguments on cases before the court.

“Nobody’s wishing Clarence Thomas harm,” Navarro said. “What we want is for him to not to harm the integrity of one of the biggest, most important institutions of our country. And frankly, if he can’t recuse himself, then he should really think about resigning.”

Hostin herself seemed resigned to never knowing what Clarence Thomas knew about his wife’s extreme activism, or when he knew it. “Because there’s the marital privilege… he can’t be forced to testify about it. And that also, I think, is causing so much concern,” she said.

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