https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-post-op-ed-says-clarence-thomas-should-recuse-himself-if-2020-election-battle-reaches-supreme-court
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/27/clarence-thomas-should-recuse-himself-if-supreme-court-has-decide-election/
https://archive.fo/5wb3h
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Thomas wrote in his memoir “My Grandfather’s Son” that he looks back at the process in “horror and disgust.” Thomas described the hearing in which he responded to Anita Hill’s sexual harassment accusations as “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”
“Most of my opponents on the Judiciary Committee cared about only one thing: How would I rule on abortion rights?” Thomas said about his confirmation hearing last year. “You really didn’t matter, and your life didn’t matter. What mattered was what they wanted. And what they wanted was this particular issue.”
The chairman of that committee was Biden, whom Thomas characterizes in his book as a liar.
Before the committee vote, Thomas said he spoke to Biden on the phone.
“Biden came on the line. I held the receiver sideways so that Virginia could hear him speak as we stood together in the kitchen,” Thomas wrote. Biden explained why he couldn’t vote for him, after which Thomas said, “That’s fine. It’s doesn’t matter to me whether I’m confirmed or not. But I entered this process with a good name, and I want to have it at the end.”
Thomas wrote that Biden replied, “Judge, I know you don’t believe me, but if any of these last two matters come up [referring to Anita Hill’s allegations as well as a leaked draft opinion he had written as an appellate judge that had drawn criticism], I will be your biggest defender.”
“He was right about one thing,” Thomas wrote. “I didn’t believe him. Neither did Virginia. As he reassured me of his goodwill, she grabbed a spoon from the silverware drawer, opened her mouth wide, stuck out her tongue as far as she could, and pretended to gag herself.”
Thomas, in a recent documentary, condemned the hearings, charging that they they were designed to “get rid of me” because they viewed him the “wrong” African American for the high court.
Decisions on recusal from Supreme Court justices are not subject to review because they sit on the nation’s court of last resort. The Judicial Conference’s Code of Conduct applies only to lower federal courts.