Washington Week with The Atlantic

(upbeat music) Good evening and welcome to the Washington Week Extra. I'm Yamiche Alcindor. This week, there were a number of headlines related to former President Trump's efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. The Washington Post in CBS News broke the news that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, repeatedly pressed former White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, to pursue efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In one of the 29 text messages that came to light. Ginni Thomas wrote quote, "the majority knows Biden and the left is attempting the greatest heist of our history." That comes as Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama, a former close ally of Trump, revealed new details about the pressure he faced in a statement he wrote quote, "President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency." That's a whole lot. Brooks also said that he told Trump he could not take those actions because they violated the U.S constitution. The statement came after Trump withdrew his endorsement of Brooks, who is running for one of Alabama's Senate seats. Joining me to discuss this and more. Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times, Laura Jarrett, anchor of CNN's "Early Start" and Vivian Salama, National Security Reporter for The Wall Street journal. This is a lot to talk about. Peter, what do you make and what is the significance of the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas literally text messaging the Chief of Staff of the White House someone who was in the room with the President. Saying nonsense essentially, saying things that we know not to be true about the 2020 election. Well, there are two levels here. The first is, the spouse of the Supreme Court Justice being involved in politics at all. There were times when Supreme Court Justice themselves were actually advisors to the President but in the last 50 years, there has been a red line. The idea that a spouse like Ginni Thomas has been as activist, she has been for years has been a question already. Should he recuse himself and allow these cases to get brought to the court that she has been in some way or another, advocating. Now we see these text messages. The second level is the fringe element of the thing she's saying in these text messages. She's forwarding conspiracy theories that are are really out there that are clearly unsupported to the White House chief of staff in the middle of this very fraught moment in American democracy, that her husband is in fact being called on to adjudicate. Two cases, get to the Supreme court that they end up rejecting not even looking at, that her husband has to make a judgment on. So of course this raises a lot of questions And Laura, you're the lawyer on this panel. So I wonder if you could weigh in here please on sort of the ability for Justice Thomas to continue to hear cases about January 6th and not recuse himself. A lot of people, including Democrats want him to recuse himself. So part of the unique circumstances that we find ourselves in here is that the Supreme Court basically operates on an honor code unlike the rest of the federal judiciary. And this came up in the hearings for Judge Jackson, the Supreme court essentially doesn't have the same code of ethics, if you will. Justice Roberts said, "I trust that they will all sort of follow the canon that other judges do but they really are on their own when they decide whether to recuse or not." There's a federal law that talks about impartiality but who would enforce that? Well, the Supreme court. And so the Supreme court's not gonna stand in judgment of their own colleagues. It's really up to them. Thus far, Justice Thomas has not stepped aside when it comes to January 6th cases. In fact, as Peter pointed out, he ruled on on several cases about the election and in particular he ruled on one and he was the sole dissent when it came to a batch of documents that the January 6th committee wanted involving Trump White House documents. Do we know that the these text messages or other text messages from Justice Thomas's wife would be in that batch? No. Again, it speaks to the idea of at least an appearance of impropriety even if there isn't a direct conflict. It sort of, is another notch or a knock against what I think already sort of undermining the public trust in the courts and the sort of systematic chipping away at the public feeling like it's not on the up and up. If this is what the sitting U.S Supreme Court Justice's wife is doing behind the scenes, actively lobbying and strategizing to overturn a democratically held election. What Laura's talking about is really sort of just like how all of this looks to the public. Vivian, you're actually also a lawyer. I almost forgot about that because you do so much work as a reporter. I don't know how people have time to get law degrees but I'll digress and not talk about that. But Vivian, there's this reporting from NBC news that came out also that says that Ginni Thomas was emailing an aid to a Republican saying that people needed to be more out in the streets. Those were her words. Way in here with your legal hat, with your journalist hat about what's going on. This is the problem that the campaign sorry the Trump administration was facing at the time is just trying to show any kind of incitement in what happened on January 6th and whether or not they had any role in basically compelling people to get out into the streets and take these actions that prove deadly on January 6th. This is something obviously that they have been fighting that they've completely denied the fact that they did anything to incite it that anyone affiliated with them or associated with them had done anything to incite and that these people were acting on their own will. So this is something that they continue to try to fight and obviously, the house committee is collecting this kind of evidence and looking at it very, very seriously because these are issues that could really come back to haunt them at some point. Laura, I wanna come back to you, which is Mo Brooks who is a Republican, who was close to President Trump. He decides to say, "oh, you know what? I wanna tell you what President Trump was trying to do and pressure me after his endorsement gets pulled by President Trump and President Trump comes out and says "I don't want you to be the next Senator from Alabama." Is there any impact of Mo Brooks coming out now? And what does it say that he wants to come out now? Yeah, the timing is sort of convenient for him. Makes you wonder what else was happening behind the scenes. But remember Mo Brooks is part of the same crew that is down at the ellipse, part of the same Rudy Giuliani cabal, talking about trial by combat and who has now been sued as part of this whole group of people who were there. And the question is whether they were all involved in sort of inciting the crowd that day, whether or not some of the things that he said that are perhaps the most disturbing, which is that for now former President actively called on him to again overturn a democratic election is part of perhaps the most disturbing part of his account. But it's also certainly the thing that the January 6th committee has zeroed in on as we have seen in court papers and other filings that have been made public. The committee is very interested in the former President's role in not just inciting the crowd, but actually being part of a conspiracy against the United States to overturn the will of the people. That's what it really speaks to. So I can imagine the committee is gonna wanna get all over what exactly he and Mo Brooks talked about. If any notes that were taken in meetings and things like that. We know the President doesn't engage in a lot of text messages or emails, but you can imagine that Mo Brooks has more to say on this issue. Well, there are so many questions there as you point out. I also wanna turn back and we talked a little bit about this on the show but I wanna turn back to sort of, the view of Americans, of President Biden's handling of Ukraine. According to a new AP poll, some 56% of Americans, said President Biden has not been tough enough on Russia and a new Gallup poll shows President Biden's latest approval rating at 42%. Peter, the people are not rallying around President Biden as they have with other Presidents in a time of war. You talk to our producers about that. You're the resident veteran reporter on this panel. What's going on here? This goes back to what we talked about on the show earlier about how the norms and the traditions have been changing, where the Supreme Court nominations are now strictly partisan affairs. Well, our valuation of our President now remains locked in this very polarized partisan way. When George H.W. Bush had the Gulf war, his approval rating shot up to 89%. When George W. Bush dealt with 9/11 his rating shot up to 90%. We don't have that anymore. This rally around the Commander-in-Chief idea is just gone. Hasn't happened under... Didn't happen under Trump. Didn't happen really under Obama, except for briefly, when the Osama bin Laden raid happened and it's not happening under President Biden it shows you how polarized our country is now. They support doing more against Russia. Some people would say they do support his policy one to be tougher, but they just don't support him. And that says something about his weakness. It says something about our polarized electorate right now. It's just not willing to support somebody at the other party and sometimes not even people of our own party. It's also important to remember that, this is not a war like similar to the Afghanistan war, where we had troops diplomats and a lot of American citizens on the ground that were exposed to immediate danger. In this case, the diplomats were out, the troops are out. A lot of Americans still exposed to danger but they were sort of given fair warning. Meanwhile, we have so many problems at home right now between inflation and COVID and all these other issues. People struggling to afford gas and food. So that's weighing very heavily on him things that are happening on the home front and what's happening in Ukraine while obviously it's very moving to a lot of Americans and like you said, Americans wanna see him be tougher on Russia. There is this separation for Americans. There is a bit of distance physically and also just in terms of their daily lives. And so you don't see it factoring into as approval ratings the way you might in other war situations. But something we'll definitely have to keep watching as this war continues and as Americans continue to weigh now as we inch closer to the midterms continue to weigh sort of what they think of President Biden and Democrats. We'll have to leave it there tonight. Thank you so much to Peter, Laura and Vivian for coming on and sharing your reporting. And thank you at home for joining us. I'm Yamiche Alcindor. Goodnight from Washington. (bright playful music)