Ginni Thomas, the wife of a Supreme Court justice, asked two Republican Arizona lawmakers to help Donald Trump overturn his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, says a new report.
It was already known that Ms Thomas, 65, a long-time conservative activist and the wife of justice Clarence Thomas, 73, had sent text messages in the days after Mr Trump’s loss one of his senior aides, chief-of-staff Mark Meadows, urging him to “Help This Great President stand firm”.
It has now been reported that her efforts to stop Mr Biden becoming president went even further, and that she sent emails to two state legislators in Arizona, asking for their assistance in blocking Democrats from taking the White House.
Emails sent by Ms Thomas to the pair on November Nov 9, 2020, argued they needed to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud, according to the Washington Post.
She wrote that they needed put aside Mr Biden’s victory in the popular vote and chose “a clean slate of Electors”.
The Post said there was no immediate response from either the Supreme Court or Ms Thomas to its inquiries about the emails.
A special committee of the House of Representatives that is investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021 by supporters of Mr Trump, and events leading up to it, is already known to be examining as many as two dozen text messages sent by Ms Thomas to Mr Meadows.
One of them said: “You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
Yet, The Post said the emails she allegedly sent to two legislators in Arizona, one of the states Mr Biden narrowly won, show she was “more deeply involved in the effort to overturn Biden’s win than has been previously reported”.
“In sending the emails, Thomas played a role in the extraordinary scheme to keep Trump in office by substituting the will of legislatures for the will of voters,” The Post said.
It said the emails were sent to Russell Bowers, a veteran legislator and speaker of the Arizona House, and Shawnna Bolick, who was first elected to the chamber in 2018 and served on the House elections committee during the 2020 session.
“Article II of the United States Constitution gives you an awesome responsibility: to choose our state’s Electors,” read the Nov 9 email. “ [Please take action to ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.”
The records obtained by The Post do not show any response from Mr Bowers, whose decision not to try and block Mr Biden’s victory in Arizona made him the target of a recall campaign.
Shawnna Bolick wrote back to Ms Thomas on Nov 10, 2020, “I hope you and Clarence are doing great!”
The newspaper said she gave Ms Thomas guidance on how to submit complaints about any of her experiences with voter fraud in Arizona.
Ms Bolick, who is now seeking the Republican nomination to be Arizona’s secretary of state, told The Post that she received tens of thousands of emails in the months after the election and responded to Thomas in the same way she responded to everyone else.
Ms Bolick told The Indpendent she had released all her records and responded on Twitter.
In a tweet she wrote: “The dishonest media wants to distract attention from election fraud & our efforts to secure elections. Let’s cut through the conjecture & put this to bed. Here is the public records request from @WashingtonPost & my emails, which show me responding as I would to any constituent.”
Mr Bowers did not respond to questions from The Independent. The Supreme Court did not respond to inquiries, and neither did Ms Thomas.
Mr Biden won Arizona and its 11 electoral college votes by just 10,000, becoming the first Democrat to take the state since Bill Clinton in 1994.
There were immediate demands for a recall from Republicans, and a false allegations of fraud by Mr Trump. An eventual recount of ballots in Maricopa County, found there to be no difference to the original tally.
The issue of asking state legislators to ignore the outcome of the college vote and select its own “electors” was a tactic Mr Trump and his advisors attempted.
The Electoral Count Act of 1887 says that in the event of “failed elections,” in which voters have not made a choice for president, state legislatures are empowered to step in and appoint electors, though it is not clear as to what represents a failed election.
One of Mr Trump’s top aides, Stephen Miller, told Fox News on December 13 2020, that appointing a pro-Trump group of “electors” was being attempted.
“As we speak today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote, and we’re going to send those results up to Congress,” Mr Miller said.
As it was, all of Mr Trump’s legal attempts failed in the courts.
His last hope was in his vice president, Mike Pence, refusing to oversee the joint session of Congress that certified Mr Biden’s win. Mr Pence refused to do so, saying he did not have the constitutional power to do so.
