Lawrence O’Donnell slams Clarence Thomas for acting like a ‘politician’ rather than a Supreme Court justice

The reputation of the U.S. Supreme Court was dealt another blow when CBS News and Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reported that after the 2020 presidential race, far-right GOP activist and MAGA conspiracy theorist Ginni Thomas — who is married to Justice Clarence Thomas — urged then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the election results. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota are among the progressive Democrats who have been calling for Justice Thomas’ resignation or impeachment; others aren’t going that far but are saying that he should recuse himself from any cases involving the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

Justice Thomas is also drawing criticism for posing for a photo with Republican Herschel Walker, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell lambasted Justice Thomas during a scathing commentary on the April 11 broadcast of his show “The Last Word,” arguing that he is conducting himself like a partisan politician rather than a High Court justice.

“It is time to call Clarence Thomas what he is: a politician,” O’Donnell told viewers. “And as a Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas is now very, very much out of control.”

Showing a recent photo of Thomas with Walker, O’Donnell added, “Here is Clarence Thomas posing at the Supreme Court with a Republican Senate candidate who believes that Donald Trump won the last presidential election. Former football star Herschel Walker, pictured here with Clarence Thomas last week at the Supreme Court, is Donald Trump’s chosen candidate in the Georgia Republican primary for the Senate race down there. The winner of that Republican primary will face Georgia’s Democratic senator, Raphael Warnock, in the general election. And there’s Clarence Thomas, who’s from Georgia, making it very clear to Georgia voters whose side he’s on.”

O’Donnell stressed that is wildly inappropriate for a Supreme Court justice to pose for a “campaign photograph with a Senate candidate.”

The U.S., O’Donnell noted, has a law requiring that High Court justices recuse themselves from cases involving a spouse, but that law doesn’t have a “criminal enforcement mechanism” because “it was inconceivable to the people writing that law that any Supreme Court justice would ever violate it.”

“No member of the Supreme Court in history has ever been suspected of or accused of anything as bad as what we already know Clarence Thomas actually did,” O’Donnell told viewers. “In January, Clarence Thomas was the only member of the Supreme Court who voted to prevent the January 6 committee from obtaining documents, records and communications from the Trump White House. We don’t yet know for certain, but it is extremely likely that the material that Clarence Thomas specifically voted to block from being delivered to the January 6 committee contains communications from Clarence Thomas’ wife to and from the Trump White House.”