Clarence Thomas Bails Lindsey Graham Out of Testifying Against Trump, Because Of Course He Does

In November 2020, Senator Lindsey Graham placed a call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger and allegedly asked if the state official had the power to throw out mail-in ballots from certain counties. Out of context, that sounds pretty bad. And in context, it sounds even worse, given the plot by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the presidential election results that year. So you can probably understand why Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, who is investigating said plot, wants Graham to testify under oath. But thanks to Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, he may never have to.

On Monday, the court’s arch conservative—who just so happens to be married to a woman who really wanted to overturn the election results as well—temporarily froze a lower court order requiring Graham to testify before a grand jury convened by Willis. The ruling comes after Graham asked the high court on Friday to intervene on his behalf and block the subpoena, claiming his calls with Georgia officials were simply about “reviewing election-related issues” in his capacity as then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, meaning they were therefore protected by the Constitution. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, however, had said that “communications and coordination with the Trump campaign regarding its post-election efforts in Georgia, public statements regarding the 2020 election, and efforts to ‘cajole’ or ‘exhort’ Georgia election officials” were not protected, and therefore Graham needed to comply with a subpoena, issued months ago, for his testimony.

While constitutional law professor Steve Vladeck told CNN that Thomas’s order does not mean Graham will never be forced to appear before the grand jury, noting that it’s “not predictive of how the full court, or even the justice who issued it, is likely to vote,” it’s nevertheless extremely disturbing that Thomas should have any say at all, considering his wife’s activities surrounding the 2020 election. In March, The Washington Post reported that Ginni Thomas “repeatedly” urged White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to try to overturn the results of the election. Over the course of more than two dozen conspiracy-riddled text messages, per the Post, she insisted that Democrats had stolen the election from Trump. In one message, she wrote: “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.” In another, she quoted a right-wing website, saying: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.” Ginni reportedly acknowledged these messages in a private interview with the January 6 committee last month and reiterated her belief that the election was “stolen.”

Several constitutional law experts have come forward to criticize Justice Thomas’s order. Constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe tweeted that the justice “violated 28 USC 455, requiring any ‘justice’ to recuse when his or her ‘impartiality might reasonably be questioned’ or his or her ‘spouse is known by the justice to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome.’” Meanwhile, University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade called the move “absurd,” writing that there “is no legal basis for Graham to refuse to even appear to testify. He can invoke objection under speech or debate clause to any particular question that intrudes on legislative activities, but this investigation is about election interference, not legislation.”

Graham’s isn’t the only phone call that’s of interest to the Fulton County DA; Willis is also reviewing a phone conversation between Trump and Raffensperger from January 2, 2021, in which the former president demanded that the Georgia secretary of state “find” him the number of votes necessary to win the state, despite the fact that he had actually lost. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state,” Trump told Raffensperger after threatening him with criminal liability. 

In an interview with the Post last month, Willis said that “people are facing prison sentences” in her investigation. The prosecutor has also said that she is aiming to issue indictments by December.

Ron DeSantis: not just an evil little man but something of an idiot too

The governor of Florida and reported 2024 hopeful contains multitudes. Per the Financial Times:

>At Yale, [DeSantis] found refuge at the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, an athlete-heavy club that featured barrels of beer and prominent former members, including the Bushes and Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh. In his recent pandemic memoir, What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year, the author and critic Charles Finch recalled two things about his former classmate, known then as “D”: he did an uncanny impression of baseball star Jose Canseco and, according to a friend, would tell dates he liked Thai food, but pronounced it “thigh”. If they corrected him, Finch wrote, he would find an excuse to leave. “He didn’t want a girlfriend who corrected him.”