The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman is absolutely right: “The controversy over Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, Clarence Thomas, and the Jan. 6 insurrection is demonstrating one profound difference between Democrats and Republicans: how they view the value of making a stink.”

Three years on, the ridiculous and entirely made-up Hunter Biden story is still a thing, more a thing than Donald Trump extorting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to try to get “dirt” on Biden. Because Republicans keep feeding it—because they know it will work.

Meanwhile, the spouse of a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice was involved up to her eyebrows in the effort to overthrow the Congress and keep Donald Trump in office. The Donald Trump who was doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding in trying to withhold arms from Ukraine. Arms that Ukraine has desperately needed in its defense against Russia. That’s a pretty big thing! All definitely worth making a stink about. But thus far, Democratic leadership in Congress is not. The most they’ve done so far is say they think Thomas should recuse himself from any Jan. 6-related cases. Ineffectively.

That’s why Daily Kos and 16 other organizations have signed on to this Take Back the Court letter, demanding that Congress open a formal investigation into Clarence Thomas’ misconduct. We’ve written to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, “to request that the House and Senate Judiciary Committees open a formal investigation into Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ misconduct in his handling of cases regarding the January 6 insurrection, the 2020 presidential election, and other cases involving his wife’s political activities.”

“Justice Thomas’ unethical conduct from the bench is within the purview of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and we urge the committees to investigate that conduct fully, in cooperation with the January 6 Select Committee as needed,” the groups write.

Even though Supreme Court justices have chosen not to abide by the same code of ethics that other all federal judges must adhere to, they are bound by a federal statute that bars them from hearing cases in which their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” or in which their spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”

Thomas has already violated that statute. He’s ruled in multiple cases surrounding the 2020 election and the insurrection—including being the lone dissenting vote requiring Trump to provide records to the Jan. 6 committee, records that may very well include communications from Ginni Thomas. “Justice Thomas clearly violated this provision when he refused to recuse himself from a case directly implicating his wife’s activities in support of the January 6 insurrection, and it is incumbent on Congress to respond,” the groups write.

Thomas’ rulings on cases in which his wife was directly involved go back at least two decades. In December 2000, the court heard Bush v. Gore, the only time in history in which the Supreme Court selected a president. While the case was pending, Ginni Thomas was collecting résumés for potential Bush administration positions. Twelve years later, he heard the challenge against the Affordable Care Act, NFIB v. Sibelius. Ginni was then heading up a group called Liberty Central, which was agitating for the law to be declared unconstitutional. Back then, a group of 74 members of Congress asked Thomas to recuse from the case. He did not. He heard the case and voted in dissent when the court upheld the law.

So we know how polite requests for recusal are going to pan out. Thomas is not going to recuse out of any sense of propriety or ethics. That’s abundantly clear. There’s only one way it happens and that would require a formal investigation.

It’s not just his refusal to recuse from cases, either, that raises ethics concerns aboutThomas. “Justice Thomas has repeatedly failed to disclose employers who paid his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars, as required by the Ethics in Government Act of 1978,” Take Back the Court points out. “This raises serious questions about what, if anything, Justice Thomas is trying to hide, whether any other undisclosed payments exist, and what possible judicial outcomes such hidden details relate to.”

“Allowing Justice Thomas to avoid scrutiny will surely cause the American people’s faith in our judicial system to deteriorate further—perhaps beyond repair. Americans know that Justice Thomas cannot act impartially in cases related to his wife’s political activities,” the groups write. “It’s up to your committees to ensure that he is held accountable for abusing his power and pretending otherwise.”

Nothing is going to happen to Thomas without Democrats kicking up a stink. An investigation into Thomas will sure stink for the Supreme Court, and for Chief Justice John Roberts, who seems to care about his legacy as much as anything else. Yes, it needs to happen.

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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a problem for the court, for the nation, and for democracy in general. That’s been true for decades, as long as his deep ties to the dark money swirling around the judiciary, and doesn’t even take into account the extremely partisan activities of his “best friend” and wife Ginni. Since those activities now include attempting to overthrow the government, the problem of Clarence Thomas just got a whole lot more glaring—and congressional leadership has been caught just a bit flat-footed.

Stepping into the void, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the first to use the “I” word. “Clarence Thomas should resign,” she tweeted. “If not, his failure to disclose income from right-wing organizations, recuse himself from matters involving his wife, and his vote to block the Jan 6th commission from key information must be investigated and could serve as grounds for impeachment.”

By all means, the House should start talking about impeachment. That’s what Thomas deserves: the ultimate censure. That’s where to start: the maximum. There’s no real other leverage the other two branches have over the Supreme Court than pressure in the public eye and the threat of action. Chief Justice John Roberts has been aware enough about his personal legacy in his career thus far to make blowing up the Thomas scandal in public—and keeping it there with discussion of impeachment—a smart tactic.

Would the 50-50 Senate convict him? No, but that’s a valuable weapon for Democrats in the upcoming election. Republicans are protecting the Supreme Court justice who has refused to recuse himself from cases involving his wife’s efforts to overthrow the government.

The good news is that Democrats are inching toward something a little more concrete than demanding that Thomas recuse. That’s where they started. A group of House and Senate Democrats, spearheaded by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), wrote to the Supreme Court requesting that Thomas recuse himself from any future Jan. 6-related cases, as well as provide a “written explanation for his failure to recuse himself” in previous cases.

“[G]iven the recent disclosures about Ms. Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election and her specific communications with White House officials about doing so, Justice Thomas’s participation in cases involving the 2020 election and the January 6th attack is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with federal ethics requirements,” says the letter obtained by The Washington Post.

The lawmakers also called on Roberts to commit to creating “a binding Code of Conduct for the Supreme Court—the only court in the country not currently subject to a judicial code of ethics—that includes (1) enforceable provisions to ensure that the Justices comply with this Code and (2) a requirement that all Justices issue written recusal decision.” They ask that he do so by April 28.

Which is a fine and appropriate next step, since Thomas will surely refuse to recuse. “He absolutely should recuse himself,” Jayapal told Politico. But, she added, “Clearly the Supreme Court is in need of ethics reforms.”

Jayapal is on the House Judiciary committee, so the ethics reform thing is another possibility. In fact, legislation to impose the Judicial Code of Ethics on the Supreme Court—which is currently exempt from it—would be a good concurrent step for Congress to be taking along with the public pressure campaign to get him to resign. That legislation exists in a bill written by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and should start moving through committee immediately.

After an ill-conceived dismissal of the issue on Monday by Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, who suggested there’s no urgency to the Thomas problem, there’s now some momentum there. Durbin had a day to think it over and is now joining Warren in saying lawmakers need to act. Durbin told CNN’s Manu Raju that imposing the ethics code on the Supreme Court is “long overdue.” Warren told him the legislation should include limits on stocks and “rules about other kinds of personal conflicts.” The Senate Democrats are expected to discuss Murphy’s legislation in their conference luncheon Tuesday, Raju reports.

That’s all fine and needs to move apace. At the same time, House Democrats should not rule out pursuing impeachment, which has to initiate in that chamber. Once again, Ocasio-Cortez is pushing Democrats to go there. Remember, she said, that pushing for impeachment of Trump on his extortion of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was initially deemed “unrealistic,” and the “debate was fierce & opposition real.” But, she argues, “When we look back at the decision to impeach Trump over Ukraine today, could you imagine if the naysayers and those claiming to be ‘politically savvier’ won? WE would be explaining why we allowed it to happen instead of the Senate explaining why they acquitted.” That’s on the Senate Republicans.

“Subpoenas, investigations, and impeachment should absolutely be on the table. We shouldn’t have to think twice about that,” she concluded in the thread. “We must go where the facts take us. A failure to act puts the imperiling of democracy squarely on *our* shoulders. It’s our duty to defend it.”

Let the Senate lead on the code of ethics legislation. How are Senate Republicans going to argue about that? The House needs to start those investigations toward impeachment. Both chambers should also be talking now about legislation to expand the court, and to put pressure on President Joe Biden to join as well. If there’s going to be any change, any accountability at the court, it’s not going to come without a big public stink. It’s the only way it’s going to happen.

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