Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Sunday that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should “absolutely” recuse himself from the court’s decisions on former President Donald Trump’s ballot access cases in Maine and Colorado, which cited the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause.
“Anybody looking at this in any kind of dispassionate, reasonable way would say if your wife was involved in the big lie — in claiming that Donald Trump had actually won the presidential election, had been agitating for that, and been participating in the events leading up to Jan. 6 — that you shouldn’t be participating,” the congressman said on CNN’s State of the Union.
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For Raskin, “The question is, what do we do if he doesn’t recuse himself?”
Last week, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows determined that Trump is not eligible for the state’s ballot due to his engagement in an insurrection, in reference to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. This followed the Colorado Supreme Court’s prior decision earlier this month, similarly ruling that the 14th Amendment rendered Trump ineligible for the state’s ballot.
The Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the matter as states are divided over whether the 14th Amendment bars Trump from their respective ballots. With five conservatives on the court — three of whom were appointed by Trump — and Thomas, whose wife worked to assist in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, justices are facing pressure to recuse themselves ahead of the potential decision.
Asked whether a decision from the court allowing states to bar Trump would only help him, Raskin said, “Donald Trump can strike the pose of the martyr in any given context.”
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What matters isn’t how a potential ruling makes Trump look, Raskin argued. Instead, the court is required to act in accordance with the Constitution.
“I don’t think we can run scared from Donald Trump. We’ve got to enforce our constitution,” he said. “And that certainly was the design of the framers, and that’s what they would have us do.”
