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Jay Shackford
The Great Ginni Thomas Snatch
By Dead Center Shacks
(About a year ago I wrote a column speculating that Ginni Thomas was the culprit who leaked the draft of the Alioto opinion to reverse the Roe v Wade decision adopted 50 years ago that had legalized abortion. Consider the latest revelations on Clarence and Ginni receiving lavish vacations (traveling on private jets and yachts), numerous gifts, even real estate purchases and home renovations for dear old mom and other benefits valued in the tens of millions of dollars from GOP mega-doner Harlan Crow over more than 20 years without any mention of it on Clarence’s financial disclosure statements that all Supreme Court justices are required to fill out and sign each year. With those disclosures now part of the public record, I’m more convinced than ever before that Ginni Thomas was indeed the leaker of the draft Alioto opinion in an effort to shore up support among conservatives, including several conservative justices (Brett and Amy) who were having some second thoughts and were being lobbied hard by Chief Justice Roberts to at least water-down the language in an effort to make it more acceptable to moderates.
Think about it. Poor old Clarence returns home about 3 pm after a vigorous three-hour day at the court. He walked through security without any of the guards checking his briefcase, even though justices are not permitted to take drafts of opinions home for study. After his driver drops him off at his Clifton, VA home, Clarence flops down in his recliner in the TV room with every intention of reading the opinion. It took about 10 minutes before he was snoring away. Ginni moved in quickly, snatching the opinion and copying it in Clarence’s study. Within minutes, the draft opinion was back in Clarence’s lap long before he woke up from his hour-long nap. Within days Ginni passed on the copy of the Alioto opinion to one of her far-right Republican friends who had devoted a good part of his/her life to overturning Roe v Wade and still to this day believes the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.)
May 7, 2022
Who Leaked the Draft?
By Dead Center Shacks
Republicans seem obsessed with identifying who leaked the 1st draft of Samuel Alito’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. For a moment, take look at who really benefits by leaking the Alioto draft a good six months before the election. Consider the following:
- Americans have a very short attention span. Remember the messy withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Many thought it would be a major issue in the 2022 elections. Hardly anyone is talking about or even remembers Afghanistan. The ruling on abortion, however, could be a decisive issue in the off-year elections. In other words, a few right-wing extremists believed that getting the ruling out early would burn off the some of the steam and outrage on the left, thus making it less of an issue in November.
- Chief Justice John Roberts was reportedly working hard on Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Comey Barrett to make some revisions in the 1st draft – a decision as now written would result in a complete ban on abortions in many states by turning over the decisions on the legality of abortions and the rules governing abortions to state legislatures, most of which are controlled conservative Republicans. The Chief Justice was thinking about modifying the 1st draft to allow for abortions in cases where the woman was raped, a victim of incest or in danger of dying by carrying the pregnancy to term. Such radical thinking!
- Republicans want the November election to be a referendum on Joe Biden, and his policies that the GOP will blame for inflation, high gas and food prices, rising crime rates and lawlessness throughout the land. The last thing they want is to make the election a referendum on abortion when 70 percent of American voters support upholding Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose.
Considering all the above, my best guess is that the leak came from someone on the right, someone with access to the 1st draft and someone who has complete disregard for our democratic processes and the deeply held traditions of the U.S. Supreme Court. The leaker, in my opinion, is Ginni Thomas – wife of Justice Clarence Thomas who is known to share his thoughts and opinions with his radical-to-the-core wife.
By leaking the 1st draft, Ginni was, in effect, pressuring Brett and Amy to stay in line with the original Alito draft decision.
Remember, Ginni Thomas sent dozens of emails to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows following the election urging Meadows to do whatever he could to “stop the steal” and overturn the free and fair election of Joe Biden, which Biden won in a landslide of 7 million votes. As a local sidebar, Ginni Thomas also successfully lobbied her own city council in Clifton, VA to take down a “Black Lives Matter” banner running across the main street. So much for “free speech.” Clifton is horse country in the highly populated Fairfax County. It consists of two blocks and a railroad crossing with a few shops and restaurants. It’s also close to where I live and play golf and where Clarence and Ginni live. To add some interesting history to the sleepy town of Clifton, it was also the site where Nancy Reagan used to have lunch on a regular basis with Washington Post owner Katherine Graham back in those days when Democrats and Republicans talked and socialized with one another.
More importantly, Ginni also admits she participated in the January 6th rally on the Ellipse, although she has denied marching to the Capitol. It is well known that Ginni Thomas has been active in extreme right-wing causes for decades (raising money and supporting candidates who would make your blood boil), and reportedly has a great influence on her husband’s thinking on major cases. She could have easily copied the 1st draft while old Clarence was snoring away, and nobody, not even her husband, would know it.
Otherwise, it would have to be one of the nine Justices (very doubtful) or one of the Justices’ clerks – a move that, if uncovered, could send them to jail and destroy their careers. If you clerk for a Supreme Court justice, the future is paved with power and riches. Why risk everything when the decision was due to be released within the next six to eight weeks and negotiations between the Justices were already underway to revise the 1st draft?
As they say, “be careful for what you wish.” Finding the leaker could boomerang for the Grand Old Party.
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