This is it.

If we found ourselves back in the days of partial integrity to be found in the U.S. Government and especially the SCOTUS itself, Justice Thomas would have been censured and then impeached long ago. A SCOTUS justice cannot have a wife that works so closely and openly with political causes that favor one party over the other, simply for power.

A justice may have a spouse that is part of a political cause that fights for environmentalism, or perhaps deregulation of an industry, but not one in which one simply advocates for a political party period.

But there was no way to impeach him because that political party controlled the impeachment process in the Senate.

But there are some things now that even the Republicans cannot overlook (January 6th), and there could be 17 votes for this, especially if President Biden threatened to pack the court if they did not impeach him.

There is no legal reason for Justice Thomas to be talking to a governor, least of all the governor that is the consensus GOP candidate if Trump doesn’t run.

And yet from Politico:

Emails handed over to American Oversight, a group that bills itself as a government watchdog, suggest that DeSantis is in regular contact with Justice Clarence Thomas.

In June 2021, Thomas’ wife, Ginni, who runs her own consulting firm, worked with the DeSantis administration to have the governor talk to a coalition of groups, including people affiliated with Judicial Watch, the conservative organization that uses information requests and lawsuits to investigate public officials.

In one of the emails about having DeSantis talk to “conservative patriots,” Ginni Thomas says that DeSantis should be acquainted with her for a few reasons: she interviewed him for the Daily Caller when he was in Congress, saw him at a state dinner when Donald Trump was president, and “my husband has been in contact with him too on various things of late.”

There is NOTHING a SCOTUS judge should be in regular contact with DeSantis about. There is nothing a regular Florida magistrate should be in regular contact with DeSantis about.

I stress this and stress this. Lawyers have earned a terrible reputation when it comes to dealing with clients and the public, whereby perhaps the hunt for money leads to lies to clients, public stuff… etc. Lawyer to lawyer, lawyer to court, court to lawyer, court to a party, THAT is an entirely different thing. I would trust communication with another lawyer over that with a priest, my doctor, or my banker. Entire careers are lost when ethical rules between attorneys and in the system are involved.

I have also said that the standard is avoiding a conflict OR avoiding even the appearance of a conflict. Thomas could be emailing or in contact with DeSantis about the best places to fish off Key Biscayne, it would do him NO good. It is the appearance that he has a conflict that would be sufficient to do him in.

This is the type of thing – because they are not talking fishing, they are talking about key cases coming up or a role for Ginni in a possible administration – that could lead to impeachment, and judicial impeachments tend to go much quicker than political ones. Granted, this one would be very political.

To the extent these emails exist, it would be shocking if they did not immediately start the impeachment process.

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[email protected] and Nicole Hickman