The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is seeking an interview with conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, CNN first reported Monday. Thomas’s role in the events of January 6 was thrust in the spotlight late last week when The Washington Post and CBS News published texts between her and then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in which she urged him try to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory. Thomas had previously admitted she attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6 but left before it devolved into the Capitol riot. She said she played no part in planning the rally.
Thomas has been on the committee’s radar for some time; her texts with Meadows were among the more than 2,000 messages the former Trump chief of staff provided to the House committee last year. Bloomberg News reported that some committee members have previously argued against looking into Thomas, out of fear that Republicans would just use such a development to bolster their portrayal of the committee as a partisan witch hunt. But representatives Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, the committee’s chairman and vice chairwoman, are reportedly in favor of questioning Thomas in an official capacity in the coming weeks. The committee is not expected to publicly address the Ginni Thomas texts when it convenes on Monday night for an unrelated vote.
Already congressional Democrats have raised concerns that Thomas’s conversations with Meadows pose a serious conflict of interest for her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas, who did not recuse himself from 2020 elections-related cases. Oregon Democratic senator Ron Wyden said, “In light of new reporting from numerous outlets, Justice Thomas’ conduct on the Supreme Court looks increasingly corrupt,” in a statement Friday. Over the weekend, Minnesota Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar echoed Wyden’s sentiment on ABC News’ This Week. “The facts are clear here. This is unbelievable,” Klobuchar said. “You have the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice advocating for an insurrection, advocating for overturning a legal election to the sitting president’s chief of staff. And she also knows this election, these cases, are going to come before her husband.”
The series of 29 text messages between Ginni Thomas and Meadows showed her sharing crackpot election-fraud theories with Meadows while urging him to help Donald Trump “stand firm” against “the greatest [election] Heist of our History.” In a November 24, 2020, text, Meadows referenced the efforts to overturn unfavorable election results. “This is a fight of good versus evil,” he wrote. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it.” She responded: “Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now…I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!” It’s not clear who Ginni’s “best friend” is, though it has been pointed out that both Ginni and Clarence Thomas have publicly referred to each other in such terms. In another exchange, Ginni forwarded Meadows a video from the conspiracy theorist Steve Pieczenik, a former State Department official whose history includes appearing on an Alex Jones webcast to falsely claim that the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting was a false-flag operation.
Earlier this month, Ginni attempted to shoot down any conflict of interest questions regarding her and her husband’s respective work. “Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America,” Ginni said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, in which she also admitted to attending Trump’s January 6 speech but claimed she “got cold and left early.” “But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work.”
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