Ahead of the House January 6 select committee’s third public hearing Thursday, a number of members said the most obvious thing possible: that it’s time for them to talk to Ginni Thomas.
Virginia (Ginni) Thomas is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. While she was once considered a conservative “activist,” in recent years she’s switched over to full-blown MAGA/QAnon conspiracy theorist, and we’ve seen from shared text messages and emails that she did everything she could to use her political influence to help overturn the 2020 election.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Ginni Thomas exchanged nearly 30 texts with Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows between November 2020 (the election) and January 2021 (the attack on the Capitol). Here’s what the Washington Post wrote at the time:
The messages, which do not directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court, show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election results — and how receptive and grateful Meadows said he was to receive her advice.
Now we’re hearing about another round of messages—emails between Ginni Thomas and John Eastman, an attorney who was one of the leading figures behind the attempt to get Mike Pence to stop the certification of the electoral votes and overturn Joe Biden’s presidential win.
Eastman’s apparent insider info
The content of the emails isn’t yet known but their existence was confirmed by the Washington Post and the New York Times. Eastman, who clerked for Clarence Thomas, also at one point talked of a “heated fight” at the Supreme Court. That statement was made in an email to a fellow pro-Trump attorney and Trump campaign officials, discussing a scheme to get the court to hear arguments related to overturning the election. While Eastman doesn’t mention either Thomas directly, his words do give the impression that he has some sort of back-channel for insider information regarding the court.
Earlier this year, Greg Jacob, a top aide to former Vice President Mike Pence, told the committee about an interaction with Eastman where the lawyer expressed confidence that they could get at least two justices on board with their scheme, including Clarence Thomas, for unspecified reasons.
Questioning Thomas
Despite all of this, somehow, the committee has spent months insisting that Ginni Thomas didn’t need to give testimony because her actions weren’t central to the plot to overturn the election. But all of these texts and emails give a very different impression. They paint her as someone who used her position to wield political influence and to spread insider information.
According to Politico, the committee’s members are finally ready to at least consider bringing Thomas in for questioning.
“Panel Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) agreed Thursday that the committee needed to delve into Thomas’ role,” the outlet writes. “Thompson’s comments and Cheney’s agreement — confirmed to POLITICO by an aide — coincided with news reports suggesting Thomas had been in touch with at least one key architect of Trump’s bid to cling to power: Attorney John Eastman.”
The outlet continues:
“At this point, the information we have come upon … it’s time for us to invite her to come and talk,” Thompson told reporters Thursday. The emails might come up “at some point” in their hearings, he said, though they were still in the “discovery phase.”
But an invitation to Thomas might come in the next few weeks, he added.
It sure seems like we’re well beyond the time for “might” but at least it’s a step in the right direction, I guess.
(image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
