Journo Jane Mayer Pens Error-Ridden Hit Piece Arguing Ginni Thomas Secretly Controls the SCOTUS

Over at The New Yorker, alleged journalist Jane Mayer is debuting a “fascinating” new conspiracy theory: that Clarence Thomas’ wife is secretly controlling the Supreme Court of the United States! The piece comes amid an effort to discredit the court in the wake of numerous legal victories for conservatives, and Mayer is looking to discredit Thomas specifically, seemingly attempting to pressure him into recusing himself from certain cases.

In a 7,000 word article that’s as excessively lengthy as it is poorly argued, Mayer makes the case that because Ginni holds conservative views and is an activist, this somehow must mean she’s influencing Clarence Thomas, the most conservative justice on the court. Does Mayer believe that absent Ginni’s involvement, her husband would be the most conservative justice on the court by a slightly smaller margin? 

Mayer’s piece has countless examples of journalistic sloppiness that serve as casual smears. Just a few paragraphs in she talks about Ginni cheering on the Stop the Steel rally that “turned into an assault on the Capitol resulting in the deaths of at least five people” before pointing out that her post was before anyone had entered the capitol. It’s clear Mayer wants the reader to make an incorrect inference here – and that’s supported by her mentioning “five deaths” that day without clarifying only Trump supporters died. Mayer does the same thing when mentioning Ginni’s relationship with Charlie Kirk, who “boasted of sending busloads of protesters to Washington on January 6th.” They didn’t participate in storming the capitol, so what’s the point in even mentioning that? There of course is none, except to falsely portray Ginni as part of a “network of radicals” that doesn’t exist, which Mayer’s is parlaying into an attack on Clarence Thomas.

The factual errors when it comes to her legal arguments for recusal are even worse.

The Federalist’s Mark Paoletta caught a number of big lies in her piece that discredit it entirely:

• Judges Don’t Recuse Over Their Spouse’s Views: Ginni’s political and public policy activism have never required a recusal based on the law. In 2011, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and a liberal icon, properly refused to recuse from a challenge to the constitutionality of proposition 8 (regarding same-sex marriage) even though his wife was the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union for Southern California, which had filed a brief at the district court level in this case, and despite his wife publicly expressing her views on the issue.
• Mayer’s ‘Expert’ Flips Positions Based on Politics: Mayer quotes Stephen Gillers liberally on the issue of judicial experts, who blasts Ginni as behaving “horribly” and “hurting” the SCOTUS and administration of justice. However, Gillers has previously defended the aforementioned Reinhardt for nor recusing, writing “We are long past the day when a wife’s opinions are assumed to be the same as her husband’s.”
• False Statement about Judge Pillard’s Recusals: Mayer says Judge Nina Pillard, who is married to ACLU legal director David Cole, has recused herself from every case in which the ACLU is involved regardless of Cole’s participation. David Cole’s name is on the ACLU’s amicus brief filed in the D.C. Circuit in Trump v. Mazars (whether former President Donald Trump must obey congressional subpoena for documents). After the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled against Trump, Pillard properly participated in the en banc panel of the full D.C. Circuit to consider a petition to rehear the case. She voted against the petition to rehear. Additionally, Cole has been extremely vocal, as is his right, in trashing all aspects of the Trump administration, yet Pillard sat on many cases concerning challenges to the Trump administration’s policies.
• Justice Thomas Was Not Where Mayer Says He Was: Mayer even falsely claims that Justice Thomas attended a luncheon called the Impact Awards. Ginni Thomas emceed the event where awards were given to conservative leaders. Mayer writes that a guest at the luncheon, Jerry Johnson, who was then the president of the National Religious Broadcasters, “later recalled that the Justice sat in front of him and was a ‘happy warrior,’ pleased to be watching his wife ‘running the show.’” Mayer’s claim is 100 percent false. Justice Thomas was not at this Impact Award ceremony. In fact, he has never attended an Impact Award luncheon ceremony. I [Mark Paoletta] spoke with Johnson, and he told me Justice Thomas was not at this luncheon. Moreover, Johnson told me that neither Mayer nor anyone from the magazine ever attempted to contact him to ask him if he saw Justice Thomas at this event or made these statements.
  

There are various other reasons not to take anything Mayer has to say seriously, as evidenced by her prior reporting.

• In another story titled “The Big Money Behind the Big Lie,” Mayer argues that Bradley Foundation is behind the doubt sowed on the 2020 election results, which is paving the way for state legislatures to implement “restrictive voting laws.” Mayer says the group has spent $18 million since 2012 supporting right wing groups involved in election issues, but Mayer is inflating the total by including all funding to a grantee, even if it barely has to do with election work. Mayer also falsely claims the Foundation makes “dark money” grants, but all their grants are publicly disclosed. Furthermore, as the National Review’s Art Pope and Rick Graber point out “It’s also absurd to suggest that the Foundation started making election-related grants in 2012 somehow knowing there would be a presidential election in 2020 with one candidate making allegations of fraud, as if we had a crystal ball. Bradley’s grants can never be used for political purposes — much less to overturn elections. All grants are made to nonprofits that are required to meet IRS guidelines that prevent them from engaging in political activity.”
• Mayer is largely responsible for making Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier on Donald Trump a household name. In 2018 she penned an article at the New Yorker titled “Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier,” which had the subtitle “How the ex-spy tried to warn the world about Trump’s ties to Russia.” “The credibility of Steele’s dossier has been much debated, but few realize that it was a compilation of contemporaneous interviews rather than a finished product,” Mayer wrote. “Regardless of what others might think, it’s clear that Steele believed that his dossier was filled with important intelligence.” Even before her article there were serious problems with the dossier’s credibility, and not a single claim contained within it has yet to be verified.
• Mayer vilified Brett Kavanaugh in repeating completely bogus and discredited allegations of sexual assault against him, then later published an article trying to rehabilitate Al Franken’s image.

Of course, none of this mattered to the leftists in the media who desperately want Mayer’s narrative to be true.

Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros

Don’t miss The Dan Bongino Show