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 lawyer 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.
He added the panel will be in touch with Ginni Thomas “soon.”
The committee obtained the emails, which show Ginni Thomas was even more deeply 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.
Eastman cooked up the legal theory that claimed Vice President Mike Pence could keep Trump in power by refusing to certify the results of the Electoral College vote presented by Congress on Jan. 6.
The right-wing legal scholar also claimed to have inside information about a major schism between Supreme Court justices over whether they might back Trump’s unconstitutional plan.
The deepening revelations about Ginni Thomas’ crucial involvement in the Trump plot raise even more questions about Clarence Thomas’ refusal to recuse himself from cases involving Trump’s effort to overturn the election.
Clarence Thomas was the only one of nine justices to vote against allowing the Jan. 6 committee to gain access to Trump’s White House records, which included damning text messages from his wife to 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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