Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas (via Daily Caller News Foundation)
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, endorsed outlandish conspiracy theories in an effort to goad former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows to overturn the 2020 election and throw his purported opponents in Guantánamo Bay, according to an explosive exposé by the Washington Post and CBS.
In the 29 messages—now in the possession of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack—Thomas reportedly called President Joe Biden’s victory the “greatest Heist in our History.” She also urged the White House to make Sidney Powell “be the lead and the face” of their efforts to topple the results. Powell’s conspiracy theories involving a vast, international plot by Dominion voting machines in coordination with Venezuela, China and other nations to install Biden as president were so outlandish that even the Trump White House distanced itself from her.
According to the report, Powell had a steady advocate in a sitting Supreme Court justice’s wife.
“Mark (don’t want to wake you)…,” Thomas wrote. “Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”
The Kraken refers to Powell’s four-state legal offensive in Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan, which was so disastrous that a federal judge in one of those states referred every lawyer behind it to their respective bar associations for possible disciplinary proceedings and disbarment.
Though Powell once stood beside Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani in a press conference announcing their election-overturning efforts, the White House released a statement on Nov. 22 stating that she “is not the Trump Legal Team.”
According to the report, Thomas reacted poorly to Powell’s snub.
“Trying to understand the Sidney Powell distancing,” she wrote.
“She doesn’t have anything or at least she won’t share it if she does,” Meadows texted back.
“Wow!” Thomas replied.
Meadows did not respond.
Powell is now fighting for her law license following a sanctions order by a federal judge in Michigan and up to $1.3 billion in liabilities from Dominion, which sued the pro-Trump lawyer for defamation.
According to the report, Powell was hardly the only conspiracy theorist Thomas seemed to endorse. She reportedly sent Meadows a link to a YouTube video labeled “TRUMP STING w CIA Director Steve Pieczenik, The Biggest Election Story in History, QFS-BLOCKCHAIN.” Pieczenik is a former State Department official turned far-right commentator who reportedly endorsed the theory that the Sandy Hook massacre was a “false flag” operation to promote gun control.
The linked Pieczenik video that Thomas sent, according to the report, promoted different misinformation popular in QAnon circles.
“Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states,” she reportedly wrote.
The Post noted that QAnon adherents believed that Trump watermarked mail-in ballots to detect supposed signs of fraud, touting the slogan “Watch the water.”
She also appeared to endorse another QAnon theory that Trump’s supposed political enemies would be sent via extraordinary rendition to Guantánamo Bay and subjected to military tribunals during an event known as “The Storm.”
“Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition,” Thomas reportedly wrote to Meadows on Nov. 5, apparently quoting material that had been shared in pro-Trump internet circles.
The House committee does not have any message of Meadows responding, according to the report.
After Ginni Thomas urged Trump’s chief of staff to overturn the election, her Supreme Court justice husband was an outlier in urging his peers to consider such cases. Thomas and Samuel Alito wrote a statement asserting that they did not believe the Supreme Court had discretion to turn away Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R) lawsuit seeking to overturn election results in four other states. The conservative justices said at the time that they did not believe the Supreme Court has “discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction,” and they had said said so before.
In February 2021, Justice Thomas also called it “baffling” and “inexplicable” that his peers voted against hearing election-related challenges by Trump and his allies:
One wonders what this Court waits for. We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us. I respectfully dissent.
The justice’s wife has denied a conflict of interest. Justice Thomas was hospitalized days before the publication of the exposé.
(via Daily Caller News Foundation)
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