Like many Black men of my generation, I cringe whenever Clarence Thomas opens his mouth or puts his pen to paper. As I write this, Thomas has been on the Supreme Court for 11,403 days. It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that he has found at least that many ways to disgrace the seat that Thurgood Marshall held for 24 years.
Well, he did it again on Wednesday. Thomas indicated that he would have allowed Donald Trump to block the National Archives from releasing records related to the Jan. 6 insurrection. While he didn’t indicate why he would have done so, one has to wonder how anyone could have found any merit in the arguments raised by Trump’s lawyers.
Through his lawyers, Trump claimed that the Jan. 6 Committee was seeking the right to “rifle through the confidential, presidential papers of a former president to meet political objectives or advance a case study.” Um, Justice Thomas? The committee is investigating an attack on one of the most sacred trusts in democracy—the peaceful transfer of power. In what world is finding out what Trump knew and when he knew it a mere “political objective”?
Thomas has already given us multiple reasons to question where his moral compass lies. This is a man who claimed that slavery didn’t amount to a loss of dignity, believes domestic violence convictions shouldn’t make you ineligible to own a gun, and believes states should have carte blanche to draw districts any way they please.
And now it seems he finds merit in claims that getting to the bottom of an attack on democracy serves a “political objective.” That sound you probably heard when SCOTUS released its opinion is the sound of Marshall turning in his grave—again.
This content was originally published here.
