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Ginni Thomas Encouraged the January 6 Insurrection

By Nate Parker | Politics | March 25, 2022 |

By Nate Parker | Politics | March 25, 2022 |


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Ginni Thomas, the wife of conspicuously-absent Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is well-established as a right-wing conspiracy theorist. A political insider for years, Ginni has been active in the federal government and Republican causes since before her husband became a Justice and continued on after he was added to the bench. Despite the conflicts of interest created by his wife’s advocacy, Thomas has never recused himself from a case in which Ginni’s organizations played a part. This includes a 2017 case where Ginni was working for one of the organizations pushing for Trump’s Muslim travel ban and the January 19 decision where the Court denied Trump’s attempt to block the National Archives from releasing White House records related to the January 6 insurrection. Thomas was the only Justice to vote against releasing the records. It was later revealed Ginni served on the board of a right-wing group called CNP Action that sought to pressure Republican lawmakers into overthrowing the valid election results in favor of hand-selected electors. We then learned Ginnni attended the January 6 rally, which turned into a violent attack on the Capitol that left multiple people dead.

Last night, CBS News and the Washington Post revealed over 2 dozen text messages between Ginni Thomas and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that took place between last year’s election and the January 6 attack. In them, Ginni pressed Meadows to encourage and support Trump in his false claims that the election was “stolen.” She also passed along conspiracy theories from Sandy Hook truthers and Q-Anon sources.

She believed there were military tribunals on the way for President Biden and company.

She also told Meadows she spoke about this with her “best friend.” There are a number of examples where Clarence and Ginni refer to their spouse as their best friend. That’s not unusual with married couples — it’s true in mine — but it’s a different story when one of the partners is a purportedly objective Supreme Court Justice and the other is a conspiracy theorist with delusions of victimhood.

The only surprise here is the bluntness of the texts, and it demonstrates an underlying confidence that the communications would never see the light of day. And they wouldn’t have, had more players gone along with Trump’s hamfisted attempts to subvert the election, or if Democrats lost their slim majority. Only the Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation and Thomas’s colleagues’ refusal to hide evidence in the Archives gave us this unexpected glimpse. Some optimistic souls believe Thomas is likely to resign or face impeachment as a result.

My more cynical nature says that Clarence Thomas has never faced a single consequence in his long career. Not for his sexual harassment of Anita Hill nor the numerous times he failed to recuse himself from cases involving his wife’s allies, and it’s worth noting Ketanji Brown Jackson has already said she’ll recuse herself from an affirmative action case because she sits on a Harvard board. Thomas has never indicated these conflicts of interest bother him and it seems very unlikely he’d start now and give President Biden the opportunity to replace a second Justice. Impeachment is a pipe dream. The United States has only ever impeached a single Supreme Court Justice, Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1805. The Senate acquitted him. Getting 2/3rds of our current Senators to vote for Thomas’s impeachment for anything short of public murder is impossible, and even then I’d have my doubts. The outlook is even dimmer after the 2022 elections when Democrats are expected to lose seats. If Thomas survives his current hospitalization — assuming he’s actually still ill and not simply in hiding to avoid prying questions — his position will likely remain secure.

One piece of tangentially bright news this morning drowned out by Ms. Brown Jackson’s hearings and Ginni Thomas’s sedition: Nebraska Representative Jeff Fortenberry was convicted in federal court yesterday on 3 counts related to lying to the FBI about illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors. In 2016 he accepted $30,000 from Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebonese-Nigerian billionaire accused of bribery. Fortenberry faces a maximum of 15 years in prison — 5 years for each charge — and will be sentenced in June. A slap on the wrist seems likely, but a win is still a win.