Ginni Thomas says she regrets post-election texts to Meadows
>> Virginia Thomas, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, says she regrets sending texts to thenWhite House chief of staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election, telling the House Jan. 6 committee that “I would take them all back if I could today.”
Thomas — known as Ginni — is a longtime conservative activist. In a transcript of the interview released by the panel on Friday, she told investigators she was “emotional” after the election when she sent several texts to Meadows urging him to stand firm with then-President Donald Trump as he falsely claimed that there was widespread fraud in the election.
In the texts, she bemoaned the state of American politics and called the election a “heist.” Thomas told the panel she still feels there were election irregularities, but she does believe that Joe Biden is the president
of the United States.
“You know, it was an emotional time,” Thomas told the committee. “I'm sorry these texts exist.”
The nine-member panel sought Thomas's interview, and she appeared voluntarily. While Thomas urged Meadows to act, and she is married to one of nine Supreme Court justices who were at the time reviewing Trump's election challenges, investigators did not believe she played a major role in Trump's efforts to overturn the election or his inaction as the violent insurrection unfolded. Her name does not appear once in the committee's final report released last week.
Still, the committee sought to speak to her as it built a comprehensive account of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and the weeks beforehand. The committee's chairman and vice chairwoman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said the panel wanted to speak to her after her name came up in communications with other witnesses.
Thomas' attorney Mark Paoletta said in a statement Friday that her absence from the report was a conclusion that “was obvious from the beginning” and that her post-election activities were “minimal and mainstream.”
In the interview, Thomas characterized herself as an “instigator” of Groundswell and other conservative advocacy groups that have met weekly as a coalition for years. She and her husband are longtime associates of conservative lawyer John Eastman, an architect of the scheme to have several 2020 battleground states send alternative electors for Trump, rather than Biden.