Clarence Thomas Voted to Stop Congress from Looking at Kelli Ward's Phone

Sometimes it’s the little pieces of a bigger story that are the most intriguing. My favorite example is that of Anthony Ulasciewicz, the private eye-turned-bagman for the Watergate burglars and Richard Nixon. In the early days of the cover-up, Ulasciewicz delivered the hush money to E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. (What was it with spooks and first initials? Was it an initiation thing, like taking a new name when you become a monk?)

Ch-ch-ch-change, please. pasnbymt // Getty Images

Anyway, Ulasciewicz had to make all of his arrangements via pay phone (ask your grandparents, kids) all over D.C. To help with this, Ulasciewicz bought one of those subway conductor’s change-makers that railmen used to wear on their belts. And it’s the change-maker that makes the story art and fixes it in the memory permanently.

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The House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021, would like to examine the cellphone records of Kelli Ward, who was at the time the chairman of the Republican Party of Arizona. Ward would prefer that not happen. From CNBC:

Ward had her records subpoenaed by the committee because of her role as a so-called alternate elector for then-President Donald Trump, who lost Arizona’s popular vote in the 2020 election, and hence its slate of actual Electoral College members. President Joe Biden won the state’s popular vote and its electors.

Ward wanted this not to happen so much that she asked the Supreme Court, with its carefully manufactured conservative majority, to lend her a hand. On Monday, the Supreme Court told Ward to pound sand, which is not a difficult thing to do in Arizona.

Alexander Kolodin, a lawyer for Ward, on Monday said, “We were gratified to see that two justices were willing to find that First Amendment issues were implicated” by the subpoena. “We hope that will be a message to those in the future who think about abusing that right in order to retaliate against Americans for exercising their First Amendment rights to free association,” Kolodin said.

Besides producing a first-class glass-half-full reaction to getting his ass kicked, Kolodin opened an intriguing little window into the whole fake electors scam. There were indeed two justices who would’ve given Ward the protection she wanted, and one of them was Justice Clarence Thomas.

Which rings a rather loud bell. From the Washington Post:

The emails, sent by Ginni Thomas to a pair of lawmakers on Nov. 9, 2020, argued that legislators needed to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud. Though she did not mention either candidate by name, the context was clear. Just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, Thomas urged the lawmakers to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure.” She told the lawmakers that the responsibility to choose electors was “yours and yours alone” and said they had “power to fight back against fraud.”

It would be interesting indeed if, while examining Ward’s phone records, a number turned up belonging to the wife of a Supreme Court justice who had just voted to conceal said phone records from a legitimate congressional inquiry. It’s the little things that make the big things shine. Ginni Thomas ought to need a new change-maker pretty soon.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has his three children.