Justice Clarence Thomas should have recused from a Jan. 6-related case to avoid an appearance of a conflict of interest after his wife sent texts to a former Trump White House official urging overturning the 2020 election results, according to several judicial experts.

“This is not your run-of-the-mill close call. … This is as far beyond the line as any Supreme Court recusal question I have seen, and I’ve studied Supreme Court recusal all the way back to Marbury v. Madison,” said James Sample, a law professor at Hofstra University. “There is an order of magnitude of severity here that is arguably unprecedented.”