Durbin calls on Clarence Thomas to recuse from Trump ballot case

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) pressed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Wednesday to recuse from a case that will determine whether former President Donald Trump can be on the ballot for the 2024 election hours before oral arguments begin.

“I’m calling for Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself in the 14th Amendment case determining if Donald Trump is ineligible for the 2024 ballot,” Durbin posted to X, citing “questions surrounding his wife’s involvement” in the Jan. 6, 2021, rally at the U.S. Capitol.

The case in question surrounds Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which has been cited in dozens of lawsuits challenging Trump’s eligibility to appear on state primary ballots.

Such cases in Colorado and Maine have left open the question of the applicability of the “insurrection” clause and have placed the Supreme Court in the spotlight as it prepares to decide whether Trump can remain on the ballot for the 2024 presidential election.

The Supreme Court will hear an hourlong oral argument over the dispute on Thursday, and all nine justices will be in attendance for the hearing. Thomas is not expected to abstain from deciding the case.

Thomas, 75, is the longest-serving justice on the Supreme Court and has faced relentless calls from Democrats to recuse from cases that involve either the Jan. 6 riot or Trump, with most of his critics citing his wife’s work with the conservative firm Liberty Consulting, which they say proves that she could financially benefit if Trump is reelected.

Ginni Thomas’s attorney, Mark Paoletta, said Democrats have been “inventing recusal standards in an effort to shrink the Court to have their preferred Justices decide cases,” according to an interview with Fox News this week.

Thomas’s wife was called to testify before the House Jan. 6 committee behind closed doors, but she was not mentioned once in the committee’s 845-page report.

The justice’s spouse had also exchanged texts with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, calling the 2020 election a “heist,” though she did not state outright that she believed the election had been “stolen.”

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“I worried that there was fraud and irregularities that distorted the election but it wasn’t uncovered in a timely manner, so we have President Biden,” she told the committee.

While Thomas has not responded directly to any calls to recuse from cases by Democratic critics, he chose to recuse himself from a petition concerning one of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election subversion case, which was filed by attorney John Eastman. The justice did not state his reasoning for the recusal, but it likely concerned Eastman’s role as a former clerk to Thomas.