The left is climbing the walls over a move that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas just made. He halted an order that challenged Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to testify about the 2020 election. Graham was to appear before a Georgia grand jury, but that decision has stayed and the left is in an uproar.
Judge Thomas has jurisdiction over appeals from Georgia and took the legal position siding with Graham. The order does halt the testimony, but it only does so temporarily so that the full court can consider the appeal.
Sen. Graham made the argument that the calls he made to Georgia election officials were protected under the speech and debate clause of the Constitution. That position was ruled against by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and they ordered Graham to testify before the Georgia grand jury.
Some on the left are now accusing Thomas of being politically biased because of the reports that he did not make it clear it was simply a temporary halt to the testimony.
One commentator who identifies as a gay activist wrote that Clarence Thomas should be arrested and removed from the Supreme Court. The arrest would bypass the impeachment process and allow Biden to nominate a replacement.
Another very popular tweet said, “Clarence Thomas is a corrupt hack and I’m so f***ing tired of corrupt hacks f***ing everything up for the rest of us.”
There were many more tweets on this issue that called Thomas every name in the book and demanded that he recuse himself.
A portion of the criticism centered around Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, who sent a number of text messages to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who served former President Trump. The texts focused on overturning the official results of the 2020 presidential election. Ginni Thomas has admitted to being at the Jan. 6 rally with Trump, but said she left early because it was cold.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is being accused of pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to question absentee ballots, according to a top election official’s report to The Washington Post in November of 2020.
A Fulton Country grand jury in Georgia subpoenaed Graham for his testimony in their investigation. Graham petitioned the Supreme Court in an emergency application last week to block the subpoena.
“Without a stay, Senator Lindsey Graham will soon be questioned by a local Georgia prosecutor and her ad hoc investigative body about his protected ‘speech or debate’ related to the 2020 election,” Graham’s lawyers wrote in the application. “This will occur despite the Constitution’s command that senators ‘shall not be questioned’ about ‘any speech or debate.’”
The order that chief Justice Thomas gave on Monday was an “administrative stay.” It serves to give the justices in the High Court more time to consider the senator’s emergency request to block his testimony from the Georgia grand jury.
Judge Thomas can act alone in the temporary order because of the jurisdiction he has over the lower court that issued the original subpoena.
Sen. Graham has not yet responded the Judge Thomas’ ruling with the administrative stay. Graham’s appeal to the Supreme Court was not the first attempt the senator made to keep from having to give his testimony in the Peach State. He has consistently maintained that the Constitution granted him “absolute immunity” in the election interference investigation.
But the Georgia district attorney disagrees. “The Senator’s extreme position defies the facts, this Court’s holdings, Supreme Court precedent, and the interests of the public,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.
And a federal judge rejected Graham’s immunity claim saying that he was “unpersuaded” by the senator’s argument.
“The Court does not find that it can simply accept Senator Graham’s sweeping and conclusory characterizations of the calls and ignore other objective facts in the record that call Senator Graham’s characterizations into question,” US District Court Judge Leigh Martin wrote in her ruling.
