Texts reveal wife of Supreme Court judge urged 2020 election overturn

BBC News

Texts reveal wife of Supreme Court judge urged 2020 election overturn

March 25, 2022

Virginia Thomas with her husband, Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas
Virginia Thomas with her husband, Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas (left)

The wife of a US Supreme Court judge repeatedly pressed Trump White House staff to overturn the 2020 presidential election, US media has reported.

Virginia Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, reportedly sent 29 text messages to former adviser Mark Meadows, urging him not to concede.

Ms Thomas called Joe Biden’s victory “the greatest heist of our history”.

The texts are among 2,320 messages Mr Meadows provided to a committee investigating the US Capitol riot.

In the text messages, seen by CBS News and The Washington Post, she urged Mr Meadows, who was Donald Trump’s chief of staff, to “make a plan” in a bid to save his presidency.

“Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back”, she wrote on 6 November. It is unclear if Mr Meadows responded.

Ms Thomas also appeared to push QAnon conspiracy theories and urged Mr Meadows to appoint Sidney Powell, a conspiracy theorist and lawyer, to head up Mr Trump’s legal team.

“Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud,” Ms Thomas wrote. “Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”

Mr Meadows told Ms Thomas that he intended to “stand firm” and said that he “will fight until there is no fight left”.

The Trump campaign later distanced itself from Ms Powell, after she made dramatic claims of voter fraud, without providing any evidence, at several media events.

Virginia Thomas – who goes by Ginni – is a prominent Republican fundraiser. She was formerly associated with the Tea Party wing of the party, a hard-line conservative movement to which Mr Meadows was also affiliated during his time in the House of Representatives.

She has been married to conservative-leaning Justice Clarence Thomas for 35 years, and has insisted her activist work has no influence on her husband’s work with the Supreme Court.

In 2010, she made headlines for asking Anita Hill to apologise for accusing Mr Thomas of harassment during his confirmation hearings in 1991.

Clarence Thomas is the longest-serving member of the US Supreme Court, having served since 1991, and is currently in hospital with “flu-like” symptoms.

He is considered extremely influential in American law, but for much of his career rarely spoke or asked questions in court until 2016 when he broke a 10-year silence.

Since the Covid pandemic began, however, Mr Thomas has become more vocal and participates in most oral arguments.

In February 2021 the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s challenges to the elections result, however Mr Thomas dissented from the decision, calling it “baffling”.

Wife’s texts leave Justice Thomas in a difficult position

The revelation of Ginni Thomas’s conspiracy-minded text messages have prompted critics on the left to call for Clarence Thomas to be impeached and removed from his lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.

They point to his lone dissent from the Supreme Court decision ordering the release of White House documents to the congressional committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack as evidence that he was secretly protecting his wife, who was closely involved in efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat.

Mr Thomas’s defenders counter that he should not be held responsible for the activities of his spouse and, in any regard, there are no ethical rules that apply to high court justices.

The impeachment process for Supreme Court justices is the same as those for US presidents – a majority vote in the House of Representatives and two-thirds to convict and remove in the US Senate. That’s an unreachable bar given the current partisan divide of the latter chamber.

In fact, only one US Supreme Court justice has been impeached by the House in US history. Samuel Chase was accused of political bias and misdeeds in 1804. He was acquitted in the Senate by a comfortable margin.  

Related:

Good Morning America

Ginni Thomas urged White House chief of staff to challenge election results, text messages show

Benjamin Siegel, Katherine Faulders, Joanthan Karl and Devin Dwyer

March 25, 2022

In the fall of 2020, after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the presidential election, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, repeatedly urged White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to attempt to overturn the election results, according to text messages obtained by congressional investigators.

“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” Thomas wrote to Meadows on Nov. 10 after the election was officially called for Biden. “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.”

Sources familiar with the text messages, which were obtained by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, confirmed their authenticity to ABC News. The content of the messages was first reported by The Washington Post and CBS News.

Meadows, who did not respond to all of Thomas’ missives, texted in late November that Trump’s challenge of the election results was “a fight of good versus evil.”

MORE: Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows fails to show for Jan. 6 committee deposition, prompting calls to hold him in contempt

“Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs,” he wrote. “Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”

“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,” Thomas replied.

PHOTO:In this Oct. 21, 2020 file photo White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows talks to reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images, FILE)
PHOTO:In this Oct. 21, 2020 file photo White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows talks to reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images, FILE)

The messages — more than two dozen between Thomas and Meadows in November of 2020, and one from Jan. 10 — were among the thousands of pages of text messages, emails and documents Meadows voluntarily turned over to the committee last year, before he reversed course and decided not to cooperate with the inquiry.

Thomas did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News. A spokesman for the committee declined to comment on the messages or their contents.

MORE: Ginni and Clarence Thomas draw questions about Supreme Court ethics

Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, told the Washington Free Beacon in March that she and her husband don’t talk to each other about their work.

“Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America,” Thomas told the conservative news outlet. “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.”

PHOTO: Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sits with his wife and Virginia Thomas while he waits to speak at the Heritage Foundation, Oct. 21, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images, FILE)
PHOTO: Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sits with his wife and Virginia Thomas while he waits to speak at the Heritage Foundation, Oct. 21, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images, FILE)

Thomas said that she attended the “Stop the Steal” rally outside the White House on Jan. 6, but left early because it was cold. She said she had no role in planning the event.

Regarding the attack on the Capitol, Thomas told the Free Beacon she was “disappointed and frustrated that there was violence that happened following a peaceful gathering.”

Ethics experts have raised questions about Thomas’ work on major issues that come before the Supreme Court, on which her husband sits.

In January, the court declined to block the Jan. 6 committee from obtaining Trump White House records over the objection of only one justice: Clarence Thomas.

“There were some eyebrows raised when Justice Thomas was that lone vote,” said Kate Shaw, ABC News Supreme Court analyst and Cardozo Law professor. “But he did not explain himself, so we don’t actually know why he wished to take up the case.”

There are no explicit ethics guidelines that govern the activities of a justice’s spouse, experts say, but there are rules about justices avoiding conflicts of interest. Federal law requires that federal judges recuse themselves from cases whenever their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

Author: John Hanno

Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.