In recent months, we’ve learned quite a bit about Ginni Thomas’ political efforts, but it’d be a mistake to assume the full picture has come into focus. On the contrary, The Washington Post reported striking new information earlier today.
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona — 27 more than previously known — to set aside Joe Biden’s popular vote victory and “choose” presidential electors, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.
If this sounds a little familiar, it’s not your imagination. The Post reported a month ago on Thomas pressing GOP state legislators in Arizona to ignore the will of the voters and appoint their own “clean slate” of electors. At the time, the article referenced two Republicans who were on the receiving end of Thomas’ lobbying.
Based on this new reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, it appears her efforts were far more expansive. The Post added that on Nov. 9, 2020 — two days after the race was called and Joe Biden became the president-elect — Thomas “sent identical emails to 20 members of the Arizona House and seven Arizona state senators. That represents more than half of the Republican members of the state legislature at the time.”
What’s more, Thomas gave the Arizona legislators radically bad advice: In a state the Democratic ticket narrowly won — according to counts, recounts, and audits — the far-right activist wrote that responsibility to choose electors was “yours and yours alone.”
In other words, Thomas suggested they had the legal authority to ignore the will of Arizona voters. They did not.
But the aggressive lobbying campaign continued anyway. In fact, Thomas emailed Arizona Republican lawmakers more than once: Her Nov. 9 message was followed by related emails a month later — targeting 22 state House members and one state senator — sent the day before members of the electoral college met.
It’s important to emphasize, of course, that Thomas’ lobbying efforts did not work, but that doesn’t negate the significance of the fact that she invested time and effort into an anti-election scheme designed to undermine our democracy.
Indeed, it’s striking just how busy Thomas was during the Trump era. Circling back to our earlier coverage, The Daily Beast recently reported, for example, that the activist would routinely meet with Donald Trump during his White House tenure, handing him lists of people to hire and fire.
The report quoted one former official saying, “These f***ing lists were so insane and unworkable. A lot of them were dripping with paranoia and read like they were written by a disturbed person.”
All the while, Thomas also worked with political organizations that had a stake in decisions before the Supreme Court — where, incidentally, her husband works as one of nine sitting justices.
She became even busier in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s defeat. For example, Thomas attended the pre-riot “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. Separate reports in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine added that she also played an organizing role in the pro-Trump gathering just south of the White House. She also had extensive communications with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, with whom Thomas discussed strategies to overturn the election results. Thomas also reportedly pressured congressional Republicans to do more to overturn the election, including calling on lawmakers to go “out in the streets.” By some accounts, she even reached out to Jared Kushner about legal options surrounding the larger offensive. This is not a situation in which the spouse of a sitting justice simply expressed political opinions. As The New York Times recently explained, the text messages between Thomas and Meadows “demonstrated that she was an active participant in shaping the legal effort to overturn the election.” And it was against this backdrop that Clarence Thomas heard arguments in election-related cases, even siding with Team Trump on matters related to disclosing important information to Congress. The Republican-appointed jurist recently insisted that our system is threatened if Americans are unwilling to “live with outcomes we don’t agree with.” If only his wife agreed.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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