Democrat Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) issued an ultimatum on March 29^th to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. AOC declared that Justice Thomas must either resign his Supreme Court seat because of his wife Virginia’s communications seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election or face a congressional investigation and possible impeachment.

AOC was responding to reports by CBS and the Washington Post that Virginia (Ginni) Thomas had exchanged 29 text messages with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The text messages expressed her doubts about the validity of the 2020 election and called for action to make things right in her view.

 

Ms. Thomas’s texts included election fraud claims that mirrored claims by former President Donald Trump himself and his most ardent supporters. For example, she wrote, “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” She declared that President Joe Biden’s win meant “the end of Liberty.”

 

“Do not concede,” Ms. Thomas urged Meadows in another one of her texts.

There were no references to either Justice Thomas himself or to the Supreme Court in Ms. Thomas’s text messages. There have been no reports that Justice Thomas sent any text messages to Meadows or anyone else echoing his wife’s opinions about the 2020 election. There have also been no reports that Justice Thomas helped Ginni Thomas write her text messages or that she was acting on the justice’s behalf.

Ms. Thomas did attend former President Trump’s peaceful rally on January 6, 2021. She was exercising her constitutional right to peaceably assemble with other like-minded Trump supporters. However, Ginni Thomas has denied any involvement in the riot that erupted at the Capitol later that day, and there has been no credible evidence presented that rebuts her denial.

Nevertheless, AOC and other leftist progressives demand that Justice Thomas be punished for his wife’s expression of her own opinions that they denounce as false conspiracy theories.

Justice Thomas’s wife Ginni is an outspoken conservative activist. She is also a private citizen who does not forfeit her constitutional right to express her opinions about the 2020 election or any other matter of public interest just because her husband is currently a Supreme Court justice.

Whatever happened to the feminist role model of the independent woman who should not have to be afraid to speak her own mind and pursue her own career, whether married or not? Apparently, Ms. Thomas was expected to keep her opinions to herself lest they be automatically attributed to her husband through guilt by marriage. How retrograde the Left can be when their target is a conservative woman married to a conservative Supreme Court justice they detest!

“Clarence Thomas should resign,” AOC tweeted. “If not, his failure to disclose income from right-wing organizations, recuse himself from matters involving his wife, and his vote to block the Jan 6th commission from key information must be investigated and could serve as grounds for impeachment.”

AOC then dragged the names of Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett into her tirade. She claimed that “a failure to hold Clarence Thomas accountable sends a loud, dangerous signal to the full Court – Kavanaugh, Barrett, & the rest – that his acts are fair game.”

“Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached,” AOC’s Squad comrade Ilhan Omar tweeted.

Democrat Rep. Mondaire Jones, the chair of a House subcommittee overseeing federal courts, threatened to conduct a “robust investigation” of the matter. Rep. Jones added ominously, “All options have to be on the table.”

Democrat Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon released a statement charging without any basis that “Justice Thomas’ conduct on the Supreme Court looks increasingly corrupt.”

This all looks like a lame attempt by the Left to use the First Amendment-protected expressions of opinion by Justice Thomas’s wife as an excuse to boot Justice Thomas from the Supreme Court. If that gambit fails, which is likely, then Justice Thomas’s enemies are demanding that he recuse himself from participating in any future cases involving the events of January 6^th and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission J. Kenneth Blackwell wrote a prescient article before the latest bruhaha erupted over Ms. Thomas’s text messages. Their February 24^th article posted on Breitbart pointed out how the Left had already been smearing her to take down Justice Thomas. It is just the latest tactic to destroy Justice Thomas, going back to what he famously characterized as “a high-tech lynching” during his Senate confirmation hearing.

“What began years ago as the politics of personal destruction,” Meese and Blackwell wrote, “has metastasized into attempts to delegitimize a distinguished and senior member of the best-functioning branch of the federal government by smearing his wife for making a private-sector career out of her principles and patriotism, and doing it in a manner that avoids an appearance of impropriety by not engaging in her husband’s realm of responsibility.”

Some leftists are too impatient for the smears to work. They were hoping that Justice Thomas would not survive the infection that sent him to the hospital recently. UCLA’s Director of Race and Equity, Jonathan Perkins, tweeted, for example: “No one wants to openly admit [we all] hope Clarence Thomas dies. Whatever you need to tell yourselves.” Perkins then launched into a despicable personal attack on Justice Thomas: “Uncle Thomas is a sexist token who’s committed himself to making us all share in he and his treasonous wife’s misery.”

Ironically, the target of Perkins’ hate speech would vigorously support Perkins’ First Amendment right to express his vile opinions. Fortunately, Justice Thomas is out of the hospital and back working on the Supreme Court to protect Americans’ fundamental liberties.