CNN legal analyst Joan Biskupic was excoriated for a Monday article in which she claimed Justice Clarence Thomas sympathized with former President Donald Trump’s allegations of election fraud in one of his dissents earlier this week.
“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday claimed election fraud is a threat to America, revealing in a forceful dissent some support for former President Donald Trump and Republicans who have refused to accept the result of the 2020 election,” Biskupic began in an article titled “Justice Clarence Thomas reveals some sympathy for Trump’s baseless fraud claims.”
In a tweet, Biskupic went even further to say Thomas “aligns” with “Trump’s baseless election fraud claims.”
Justice Clarence Thomas aligns with Trump on baseless election fraud claims: https://t.co/hwjyWTJkOR
— Joan Biskupic (@JoanBiskupic) February 22, 2021
“A longtime conservative, Thomas’ legal views naturally aligned with the Trump administration,” she continued in the article. “But his dissent stands out for how much it subscribed to the Trump worldview of fraud, a notion debunked by election law experts and that has failed overwhelmingly in dozens of state and federal court challenges.”
Before going after his wife, Ginni Thomas, for her views, Biskupic went on to pull various quotes from Thomas’ 11-page dissent, noting how often he used the word “fraud” and implying that Thomas and Trump are basically on the same page regarding the 2020 presidential election.
Ed Whelan, who is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, tore into Biskupic’s article in a piece for National Review titled “Bizarre Distortion of Justice Thomas’s Election Dissent.”
“I’m amazed to see that Thomas’s dissent somehow generated this wildly distorted article from CNN’s veteran Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic,” he wrote.
“A trusting reader might imagine that Thomas’s dissent is replete with references to Dominion and Smartmatic and to various of Trump’s other allegations of fraud,” Whelan continued. “In fact, Thomas makes no mention of such allegations. Nor does the word ‘Trump’ appear a single time in his opinion.”
“Moreover, Thomas states in his opening paragraph (and repeats twice later) that the Pennsylvania supreme court decision that the Court was asked to review ‘seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election,’” added Whelan. “That’s not a statement you ever heard Donald Trump make.”
Ilya Shapiro, director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, also took CNN to task for publishing Biskupic’s article, calling it “false framing.”
This is a false framing of Thomas’s dissent. @CNN you should retract. https://t.co/d8AmZhVqlG
— Ilya Shapiro (@ishapiro) February 24, 2021
Joan you should rewrite your piece. You know the case was about the independent state legislature doctrine and has nothing to do with Trumpian conspiracy theories.
— Ilya Shapiro (@ishapiro) February 24, 2021
Thomas was joined in his dissent by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. As The Daily Wire reported:
Justice Clarence Thomas issued a vigorous dissent Monday in response to the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear a challenge against the Pennsylvania state court’s ruling that permitted ballots to be counted even if they were received three days after Election Day.
“One wonders what the Court waits for,” Thomas wrote. “We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us. I respectfully dissent.”
Thomas acknowledged that the case before the Court would not have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, but he also warned that the unwillingness of the Supreme Court to deal with the issues presented in the case now could hold potential problems in the future.
Related: ‘Citizens Deserve Better’: Justice Clarence Thomas Dissents In PA Election Case