Thread by @SethAbramson

THREAD/ BREAKING NEWS: With a federal judge now finding that Trump likely committed federal felonies related to January 6, America is now on a collision course with a constitutional crisis. This isn’t hype—it’s legal fact. As an attorney, I explain in this thread. Please RETWEET.

1/ Below is the news that set America on a path to crisis. It arose in the context of congressional attempts to secure emails from one of Trump’s pre-1/6 lawyers, John Eastman.

Eastman has asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. cnn.com/2022/03/28/pol…

2/ Eastman, with Trump adviser Peter Navarro—who’ll be referred to DOJ by Congress for criminal prosecution sometime this week or next—was one of the authors of the January 6 coup plot. But there were others—and their identities are what have now launched a constitutional crisis.

3/ Given that Eastman is claiming the emails the judge ordered turned over to Congress are privileged attorney-client work-product, and given that—*after reviewing them*—the judge says they likely establish that Eastman *and Trump* committed crimes, this ruling will be appealed.

4/ As much as any case that’s ever come under federal jurisdiction, the Supreme Court of the United States will want to weigh in on whether the legislative branch of our government can get supposedly privileged emails involving the head of the executive branch of our government.

5/ John Eastman is not just a former clerk of current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, he has been a good friend of Justice Thomas and his wife (far-right activist Ginni Thomas) for decades. But the Eastman-Thomas connections relevant here go well beyond this—*well* beyond.

6/ As discussed at length, with full sourcing, in the article below—which has just been made free to the public (🔓)—Ginni Thomas appears to have been both (a) instrumental in the formation of Trump’s legal team, *and* (b) instrumental in forming its plot. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…

7/ In the latter half of Trump’s presidency, Ginni Thomas became a top Trump adviser, with the *particular* task of helping Trump staff his operations with loyalists. When Trump’s legal team began to coalesce in mid-2020, it began with one of Thomas’s best friends and associates.

8/ Cleta Mitchell, the Ginni Thomas friend and associate who helped launch Trump’s pre-election legal team in expectation of post-election legal challenges, would end up on the infamous call between Trump and Georgia SoS Brad Raffensperger that’s now under criminal investigation.

9/ It was through Mitchell—and apparently Thomas—that Eastman was recruited to assist Trump in a course of legal representation that a federal judge now says was likely criminal on both Eastman’s part *and* Trump’s. Ginni Thomas had a *particular* reason to want Eastman involved.

10/ Ginni Thomas was, during Trump’s presidency, in regular indirect and direct contact with John Eastman through Thomas Clerk World, a private listserv that is *exclusively* used by former Thomas judicial clerks and (for reasons that are unclear) far-right activist Ginni Thomas.

11/ Even Clarence Thomas doesn’t use Thomas Clerk World—though his wife aggressively does—presumably because the discussions there sometimes include debates over issues that will come before SCOTUS, as happened *repeatedly* in the fall of 2020 and immediately after the election.

12/ Ginni Thomas and Eastman both acknowledge that debates over Trump’s legal strategy occurred on the listserv, and they both participated in such debates. We know that as this was ongoing, Ginni Thomas was a) preaching insurrection and b) in contact with Trump’s chief of staff.

13/ Ginni Thomas has long had a close relationship with Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows—even using one of the orgs she leads to give him a very public award—just as she’s had a close relationship with Eastman.

Both Eastman and Meadows are now hiding their emails from Congress.

14/ Before Eastman or Navarro had set to writing their coup plot, the *exact contours* of what they’d later reduce to writing were outlined by a secretive far-right organization Ginni Thomas helps lead. We now know that there were secret Thomas-Meadows exchanges during this time.

15/ We also know Ginni Thomas and Eastman engaged one another on a private board, and—given their decades-long friendship and the fact that Eastman’s plot mirrored one Thomas’ group (with which Eastman is affiliated) outlined, there’s every reason to expect Thomas-Eastman emails.

16/ We don’t know what Eastman is hiding in his 1,000+ emails, only that—per a federal judge—it *is* some sort of conspiracy. While it’s likely emails by Ginni Thomas are among the 1,000+, the simple fact that she orchestrated Trump’s legal team and strategy makes her a witness.

17/ We have a strong sense of the vehemence of Ginni Thomas’ desire to be involved in the planning of January 6 from the *avalanche* of texts we know she sent Trump’s chief of staff *advocating the overthrow of American democracy* by any means necessary—even jailing journalists.

18/ MID-THREAD BREAKING NEWS: House January 6 Committee Now Believed to Be Likely to Seek Interview with Ginni Thomas nytimes.com/2022/03/28/us/…

19/ In the event you missed it, here is an article from this past week about Ginni Thomas’ insurrectionist texts to Mark Meadows. newrepublic.com/article/165859…

20/ Justice Thomas has never recused himself from a SCOTUS case over his wife’s far-right activism—including being the sole dissenter *in a case over 1/6 emails* that might’ve included ones written by his wife (he couldn’t know either way, unless he discussed the case with her).

21/ But now—as Eastman prepares to appeal a federal court order requiring him to turn over emails we *know* (a) incriminate the former President of the United States and (b) could include proof of Ginni Thomas’ involvement in that criminal conspiracy—matters are even more dire.

22/ The Eastman case presents weighty constitutional questions—in the view of conservatives, at least, if not most legal analysts (who see it as a simple “crime-fraud exception” to attorney-client privilege)—and right now the anticipated SCOTUS vote on such a case would be 5-4.

23/ Likely to protect Trump because of partisanship or a benighted view of the executive branch—falling under the “theory of the unitary executive” (Google it)—are Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Gorsuch. In this matter, Roberts would likely side with progressives.

24/ Of course, as we’ve seen, Clarence Thomas cannot possibly sit on a case in which his wife’s correspondence—and possibly criminal complicity in a seditious conspiracy—is at issue, both for the obvious reasons *and* because Ginni may have discussed her actions with her husband.

25/ The problem is that the sole arbiter of whether Clarence Thomas will recuse himself from a case is...

...Clarence Thomas.

Short of impeaching/removing a SCOTUS Justice for the first time in our history, Congress can’t stop Thomas from sitting on a case involving his family.

26/ Were Thomas to recuse himself, the very possible result would be a 4-4 SCOTUS decision on Eastman’s emails, which would *uphold* whatever the court immediately below’s ruling was (that would be the court directly *above* the federal district court that made the ruling today).

27/ Mind you, this crisis applies to *any case arising from today’s news*. What I mean by this is that even if for some reason Eastman doesn’t appeal, there’ll still be the issue of *Meadows’* emails. Or a refusal by Ginni Thomas to turn over her emails in response to a subpoena.

28/ It’s likewise a crisis if *Cleta Mitchell* won’t turn over emails, or another person Ginni Thomas worked closely with on the January 6 plot, Barbara Ledeen—a GOP Senate staffer—won’t. Either the Eastman case blows up everything by involving the Thomases, or the next one does.

29/ We already have members of Congress calling for Thomas to recuse himself—and candidly we might even expect (behind the scenes) the unprecedented step of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court speaking to Thomas, which apparently hasn’t happened before. washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…

30/ But no one can make Thomas recuse—and given that he’s an ideologue who’s said he shares his wife’s values and beliefs, there’s no reason to believe he will.

So what else could possibly happen, but that those calling for Thomas’ recusal will eventually demand his impeachment?

31/ That would put us in the position of the leaders of the U.S. legislative branch trying to execute the first-ever successful impeachment of a leader of the U.S. judicial branch over his impermissible protection of not just his wife but the leader of the U.S. executive branch.

32/ And at stake, in all this, is nothing more than the 2024 presidential election and the future of the Republican Party—as if the GOP doesn’t oppose a Thomas impeachment *and* shut down the House January 6 Committee if the GOP takes Congress, Trump will bolt the GOP and end it.

33/ Remember that if Trump is convicted of the crime a federal judge just said he’s more likely than not guilty of, he can’t run for President of the United States again. Which means he must demand lock-step sedition from the GOP or else threaten to leave it and destroy its base.

34/ On the other side of the ledger, Clarence Thomas loves his wife more than anything in the world—every story about them tells of their exceedingly happy marriage—and him refusing to recuse himself from a case involving her could literally *save her from federal imprisonment*.

35/ Even if we presumed Clarence Thomas to be a man of honor—which we should not presume—we could not imagine him to be so invulnerable to human emotion that he wouldn’t make a recusal decision in his wife’s case based on his love of her, rationalizing away the corruption of it.

36/ How this crisis could be resolved:

1⃣ No Trumpist defendant/witness who corresponded with Ginni Thomas about 1/6 *ever* appeals a DOJ/House subpoena to SCOTUS. Likelihood: 5%.

2⃣ Clarence Thomas recuses himself from all cases potentially involving his wife. Likelihood: 5%.

37/ More potential resolutions to this crisis:

3⃣ The U.S. House impeaches Clarence Thomas and the U.S. Senate convicts and removes him. Likelihood: <1% (while the House could easily impeach Thomas, there is almost no chance at all that the Senate would convict and remove him).

38/ More potential resolutions to this crisis:

4⃣ Ginni Thomas volunteers to hand over her private correspondence involving 1/6 without asserting her Fifth Amendment privilege or withholding documents through litigation. Likelihood: <5% (there’s no indication she would do this).

39/ More potential resolutions to this crisis:

Thomas does *not* recuse himself, but nevertheless the effort by Congress to get insurrectionists’ emails is *successful* before the far-right court. Likelihood: ~25% (incredibly, this is the best option for those who love America).

40/ Here’s the problem, even in the last scenario imagined above: the reason all Trump defendants are dragging their heels is that they believe the GOP will immediately end the House January 6 Committee if it takes control of Congress in January 2023. Which they definitely would.

41/ Why won’t the GOP do the right thing? Because of what I’ve said as a Trump biographer—and many other such biographers have said—for years: Trump has a *gun* to the head of the GOP. He can *end* the party at any time.

And he certainly would, over all of this, if pushed to it.

42/ While DOJ taking action would change things—it would mean it was no longer just a House committee taking action to subpoena documents from insurrectionist leaders—there is *no evidence* DOJ will do this, as such subpoenas would have gone out *a year ago* if they were coming.

43/ Those who say that maybe the DOJ is doing work behind the scenes we can’t see don’t understand how federal criminal investigations work. As a former federal criminal investigator, I’m telling you that subpoenas for the documents at issue would’ve been issued in February 2021.

44/ So what we’re *actually* facing is a 2022 midterm and 2024 general election in which sedition is on the ballot far more than the economy or the war in Europe—because everyone will know Trump was part of a traitorous criminal conspiracy and was allowed to run for POTUS anyway.

45/ And even though the GOP leadership *knows*, now, that the evidence puts Trump at the heart of a criminal conspiracy to overthrow American democracy, it will feel it has to to *openly* support Trump’s sedition because—in its mind—doing anything else *ends the GOP permanently*.

46/ The problem, of course, is that a man elected under the banner of sedition is no president at all—most importantly, *in his own mind*. Why would we expect Trump to govern (or leave office) as though he’s leading a democracy when his GOP-supported platform was *open* sedition?

47/ We learned, this week, that Trump is *actively* pursuing a seditious conspiracy, seeking to bribe federal officials with money from his campaign coffers to “rescind” (his words) the 2020 presidential election—an illegal coup. Here’s the report on that:

48/ That we heard *nothing* from GOP leadership when the above report dropped in the last week confirms what we could expect from it going forward: it will say that it supports the legal process playing out, but it’s already ensured that legal process (at SCOTUS) will be corrupt.

49/ If you wonder why Trump is not scared right now; why Ginni Thomas is not scared right now; why Mitch McConnell is not scared right now; it’s because they have played out everything contained in this thread and understand that all that matters are the 2022 and 2024 elections.

50/ And this is why—while I’ve been writing threads like these—Trump and McConnell (with Ginni Thomas’ help behind the scenes) have been focused on rigging the 2022 and 2024 elections via new statutes that under past Supreme Courts would have been illegal. nytimes.com/2022/03/18/us/…

(🔐) For more reporting on Ginni Thomas, see below. I wish I could say I see a light at the end of this constitutional crisis—other than the need to *vote*—but I don’t.

Those of us who love America and rule of law can see that we’ve been cleverly trapped. sethabramson.substack.com/p/new-the-comi…

(PS) One other resolution to this I didn’t mention above is if Eastman decides to cooperate fully with Congress.

The problem here is that Congress has no leverage to convince him to do so unless DOJ is behind the scenes implying it’ll indict him. And we have no evidence of that.