In the chaotic days following the 2020 US election, Donald Trump's chief of staff received a flurry of text messages from one of the president's most ardent and well-connected supporters.
"Help this great president stand firm!" Ginni Thomas texted Mark Meadows.
"You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America's constitutional governance at the precipice."
Like Mr Trump, Mrs Thomas was pushing the White House to make an aggressive and unprecedented effort to overturn Joe Biden's electoral victory.
"The majority knows Biden and the left [are] attempting the greatest heist of our history," she texted Mr Meadows.
He replied, according to copies of the messages obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News.
"This is a fight of good versus evil," he texted.
"Evil always looks like the victor until the king of kings triumphs."
It wasn't just in private that Mrs Thomas made her position clear. She also took to the streets.
On January 6, 2021, Mrs Thomas attended the "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington, which later morphed into a violent insurrection at the US Capitol building.
She has since claimed she left the rally early because it was too cold.
Mrs Thomas is a prominent conservative activist, and her actions may have gone unnoticed if she were an ordinary citizen.
However, she also is married to one of the most powerful people in America: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Her husband is now tasked with deliberating on investigations into the riot from the highest court in the land.
That has led some experts to demand he recuse himself or even be impeached.
The judge and the activist who fell in love
In 1991, Clarence Thomas was thrust onto the national stage when he was nominated by former president George HW Bush to the Supreme Court.
Ginni Thomas — whose mother was active in the Nebraska Republican party — had been involved in right-wing political causes since her youth.
She refused to take a neutral stance simply because of her husband's new position.
"A lot of people know me because of my husband, who's on the Supreme Court," she said, while endorsing Republican Senator Ted Cruz during his 2016 presidential run.
"But the truth is: I'm my mother's daughter. And I caught the bug when I was a teenager."
The couple met in 1986 at a conference on affirmative action — policies intended to improve employment of educational outcomes for minority groups and women — which they both opposed.
After bonding over politics and religion, they got married the following year.
In the early 2000s, Mrs Thomas became a senior executive at conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and a correspondent for The Daily Caller — a short-lived, right-wing media outlet run by commentator Tucker Carlson.
She also launched Liberty Central, a nonprofit activist group with anonymous financial backers, and began appearing on Fox News, where she railed against the "tyranny" of the Democrats.
Over the years, Mrs Thomas has steadily built her public profile and network across the US conservative movement.
But it wasn't until two years into the Trump administration she finally gained direct access to the centre of American political power.
As a candidate, Mr Trump had heaped praise on Justice Thomas for voting to sink former president Barack Obama's signature healthcare policy.
In 2018, Mrs Thomas turned that professional admiration into a personal connection when she nabbed a private lunch for herself and her husband with the most powerful man in the world.
After that, she reportedly called and visited the president at the White House regularly, with one former official claiming the pair gossiped together about members of the Republican party.
Meanwhile, as Mrs Thomas's political connections were reaching new heights, so was her husband's power on the bench.
Silent judge finds his voice
Despite being the longest-serving justice on the court, until recently Justice Thomas's role was more akin to a secondary character.
"His influence has not been pronounced," said Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University.
"That's the kindest way to say it. He's been more of a loner than other justices on the court."
Mr Thomas was nominated under a cloud of controversy, accused of sexual harassment by attorney Anita Hill, who had advised him while he was chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Although she ultimately failed to stop the confirmation, Ms Hill became a national figure when she testified live on television in 1991.
"I had important information about an individual who was picked to sit for a lifetime appointment on our country's highest court," she said in an interview three decades later.
Since then, while his wife has become known for her outspoken views, Justice Thomas has often chosen silence.
From February 2006 to February 2016, he did not ask a single question from the bench, choosing instead to make his philosophy clear by voting conservatively — often in the minority.
When Donald Trump became president, the balance of the court was up-ended and he was able to hand-pick three new conservative justices.
Even with the appointment of liberal Ketanji Brown Jackson this year, the conservatives hold a clear 6-3 super-majority.
Justice Thomas is no longer on the sidelines.
'She joined the team from the inside'
Mrs Thomas has consistently claimed her activism has had no bearing on her husband's judicial record.
"Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles and aspirations for America," she recently told right-wing news outlet The Washington Free Beacon.
"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."
Prior to the 2020 election, there were numerous occasions when Mrs Thomas's activism intersected with cases being considered by the Supreme Court.
However, according to Professor Gillers, when it comes to the January 6 riots, it is impossible for Justice Thomas to rule objectively, given what is known about his wife's involvement.
"I am not saying that Ginni Thomas cannot speak out forcefully, vocally [and] publicly on [the] issues of the day, even if those issues then wind up before her husband at the Supreme Court," he said.
"That's not what this is about. What this is about is the fact that she went further.
"By reaching out to Mark Meadows she made herself a player. She joined the team from the inside."
The text messages were among 2,320 Mr Meadows gave to the Democrat-led House Select Committee investigating the insurrection, before he stopped cooperating.
Mrs Thomas sent 21 messages to Mr Meadows, and he sent her nine.
Some experts argued the messages proved Mrs Thomas's ambition.
"We are talking about an insurrection and a conspiracy to thwart an official proceeding of the United States government," said James Sample, a law professor at Hofstra University.
"Ginni Thomas was part of the team that tried to undo the results of the presidential election.
Justice Thomas was the sole dissenter when the court ordered the Trump administration to release documents relating to the attack on the Capitol.
He did not share his reasons.
Professor Sample labelled the Thomas's marriage the "worst conflict of interest" in the Supreme Court's 233-year history.
"The court has been sitting since 1790," he said. "In all those years, no relative … of a justice has gotten the kind of attention [or] created the kind of turmoil and division that Ginni Thomas's activities have generated."
ABC News contacted both Mr and Mrs Thomas for comment but did not hear back prior to publication.
Has the Supreme Court been compromised?
Supreme Court justices have the discretion to recuse themselves from cases where they could be deemed to have a vested interest.
Despite recusing himself more than 50 times previously, Justice Thomas has so far refused to opt out of decisions tied to the events of January 6.
And it's unlikely he will, according to Professor Gillers, in case the move is viewed as an admission he should have done so earlier.
"There is the possibility of informal efforts, most likely by the Chief Justice, trying to persuade Justice Thomas that, by sitting on these cases, he's harming the court," Professor Gillers said.
However, despite the lofty title, Chief Justice John Roberts does not hold much sway over his peers.
So, unless something unexpected occurs — such as a move to impeach him — Justice Thomas is likely to hold his position while the court enters one of its most influential periods in living memory.
A turning point for American democracy
In recent weeks, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has been closing in on Mr Trump's allies. It recently interviewed his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner.
As it did with Mr Meadows — who was eventually held in criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena — it may request Mrs Thomas appear before the panel.
If that were to happen, it would only add to the pressure on Justice Thomas to recuse himself from matters related to the failed plot to stop the certification of President Biden's electoral win.
Either way, it's clear Justice Thomas is going to be a critical figure in legal decisions that could drastically reshape American life for decades.
He's moved from the outskirts of the court to its core, with his wife by his side.
"The American constitutional experiment is at an inflection point," Professor Sample said.
"And, no matter whether Clarence Thomas rules in any individual case or not, the right-wing conservative project to overtake the Supreme Court of the United States has been a smashing success."
