Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was discharged from the hospital on Friday after being treated for an infection for nearly a week, according to Supreme Court spokesperson Patricia McCabe.
Thomas entered Sibley Memorial Hospital in D.C. last Friday evening after experiencing “flu-like symptoms,” and was diagnosed with an infection, the Supreme Court announced on Sunday.
The high court’s announcement at the time stated that Thomas expected to be released “in a day or two.” However, the justice ended up missing four days of oral arguments, and the Supreme Court declined to provide any status updates until Friday.
McCabe did not explain on Friday why Thomas’ stay was longer than what the court had said was expected.
Thomas is the Supreme Court’s longest-serving justice, having been on the bench since 1991. At 73 years old, he’s likely to soon be the oldest justice on the high court if Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is successfully confirmed as outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer’s replacement.
Thomas’ release from the hospital comes amid yet another bombshell revelation of his wife, Ginni Thomas, being intimately involved in ex-President Donald Trump and co.’s bid to steal the 2020 election: Multiple news outlets obtained a series of text exchanged between Ginni Thomas and then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows showing Thomas frantically urging Meadows to undo the election, which she called “the greatest Heist of our History.”
Ginni Thomas also has ties to Trump’s fake elector scheme and the organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally in the Capitol on Jan. 6 that preceded the violent insurrection. Thomas recently admitted to going to the rally but claimed she wasn’t involved in organizing it.
As a result, Clarence Thomas’ decisions in cases involving the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection have come under major scrutiny. He was notably the only dissenter in the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision to allow the House Jan. 6 Committee to access Trump-era White House records related to MAGAland’s election steal plot. But thus far, criticism of Justice Thomas’ potential conflicts of interest tied to his wife’s activism have been met with a shrug from Republican leadership.
“I think Justice Thomas could make his decisions like he made every other time. It’s his decision based upon law,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Friday.
