Justice Clarence Thomas has officially left the hospital after a stay of nearly a week after he was forced to miss Supreme Court oral arguments due to flu-like symptoms that developed last Friday. He was later diagnosed with an infection.
A statement released by the Supreme Court did not say why he remained in the hospital longer than expected.
Thomas, 73, was admitted to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, part of the Johns Hopkins Health System, last Friday. He received intravenous antibiotics. Many initially speculated that he had COVID-19, since the health of Supreme Court justices is closely watched. Every justice on the court is fully vaccinated against the virus.
However, Thomas now faces mounting ethics concerns amid reports that his wife Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni, was involved in the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election, playing a key role in pressuring the White House to back former President Donald Trump’s lies that the election had been stolen from him.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
The House Select Committee tasked with investigating the January 6 insurrection has in its possession 29 text messages between former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas that show Thomas urging Meadows to continue the effort the overturn the election results.
The committee obtained the messages because Meadows turned over thousands of text messages before he stopped cooperating with the committee. Ginni Thomas has previously claimed that she attended the “Stop the Steal” rally ahead of the attack on the United States Capitol but that she did not play a role in plotting the attack itself.
“The text messages tell a much different story. Ginni Thomas was involved in the plot, and she likely knew that her text messages were coming out, so she tried to get ahead of the story,” PoliticusUSA’s Jason Easley observed yesterday. “It didn’t work.”
Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.
