The Jan. 6 committee plans to ask Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to testify after emails surfaced connecting her to pro-Trump legal guru John Eastman.
Reversing the panel’s previous stance on Thomas, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Thursday that the committee will seek her testimony as evidence piles up about her deep involvement in Trump’s scheme to overturn his election defeat.
“We think it’s time that we, at some point, invite her to come talk to the committee,” Thompson told Axios.
“I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them,” Thomas told the Daily Caller, a conservative news site, suggesting she would voluntarily testify.
Thomas, a conservative activist, communicated with members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle ahead of the attack and also on the day of the insurrection, when hundreds of Trump’s supporters violently stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
The committee obtained the emails, which show Ginni Thomas was even more involved in Trump’s illegal scheme than previously known, after Eastman was ordered by a federal judge to hand them over, the Washington Post reported.
On his blog Thursday, Eastman posted a single email from Thomas on Dec. 4, 2020, in which she asks Eastman for a status update for a group she describes as “grassroots state leaders.”
“OMG, Mrs. Thomas asked me to give an update about election litigation to her group. Stop the Presses!” the headline on the blog post reads.
Eastman also said he never discussed with either Thomas “any matters pending or likely to come before the Court.”
Justice Thomas was the only member of the Supreme Court to vote against allowing the Jan. 6 committee to gain access to Trump’s White House records, which included text messages from his wife to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
In those messages, Ginni Thomas urged Meadows to convince Trump to resist leaving office peacefully and said her “close friend,” a term she often uses for her husband, was intrigued by Trump’s effort.
Her deep involvement in Trump’s failed campaign to overturn the 2020 election has spurred a new push for mandatory ethics rules covering Supreme Court justices. Currently, there is no single body of ethics that the nation’s highest court must follow when discharging their duties.
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