More than half of Americans believe Thomas should not weigh in on 2020 election cases

More than half of Americans believe that Justice Clarence Thomas should not be weighing into cases related to the 2020 election in light of recent reporting about his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, according to a new poll.

A Politico-Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday found that 53 percent of Americans believe that Thomas should recuse himself from 2020 election cases due to his wife’s actions, while 28 percent believing he should not recuse himself. 

The poll refers to reporting from CBS News and The Washington Post last month, which found that Ginni Thomas allegedly sent messages to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows pushing for the 2020 presidential election results to be overturned.

“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!…You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” she said in one text message to Meadows on Nov. 10, according to the newspaper.

The messages are a part of more than a dozen that she sent to the former top Trump aide. 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has already called on Thomas to recuse himself from cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. 

The development complicates an investigation that Republicans have already decried as partisan, with new ethical concerns raised over Thomas’s role as a Supreme Court justice and his impartiality in light of his wife’s actions. 

Multiple news outlets have reported that the House panel investigating the Capitol riot are interested in interviewing Ginni Thomas, though no formal announcement on the matter has been made. 

The Politico-Morning Consult poll was conducted between April 1 and April 4 with 2,003 registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.