The House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol building — as well as attempts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election results — may subpoena Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a far right activist and the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), vice chair of the committee, discussed the committee’s next moves during CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday.
In June, the committee asked Thomas to appear before them voluntarily after evidence surfaced that she had spoken with Trump lawyer John Eastman, who was central to the plot to overturn the outcome of the Electoral College through the use of fake electors. At the time, Thomas said that she “look[ed] forward” to speaking with the committee, but since then, she has not taken any action to indicate that she will testify. Her lawyer has also expressed reluctance to have his client cooperate, stating in a letter to the committee late last month that he did not understand why the panel had any “need to speak” with Thomas.
Cheney maintained that talks between the committee and Thomas’s lawyer are ongoing. “We certainly hope that she will agree to come in voluntarily,” Cheney said, “but the committee is fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena if she does not.”
“I hope it doesn’t get to that,” Cheney added.
Cheney on Ginni Thomas: "We certainly hope that she will agree to come in voluntarily, but the committee is fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena if she does not." pic.twitter.com/diifMS8LS4
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 24, 2022
Although the January 6 committee held what was supposed to be its final public hearing last week, the committee has indicated that its work now has an indefinite timeline, saying that evidence is continuing to come in and that additional public hearings may be convened in the future.
The committee likely wants to ask Thomas about communications beyond her correspondence with Eastman. In addition to her messages to Eastman, Thomas sent a number of texts to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, urging him to find ways to keep Trump in office even after President Joe Biden was declared the official winner of the 2020 election.
Thomas asked Meadows to “release the Kraken” — a reference to an unfounded set of allegations from Trump-aligned lawyers of supposed evidence of voter fraud — and to “save us from the left taking America down.”
Thomas also contacted dozens of Arizona lawmakers, asking them to overturn Biden’s win in the state by having the legislature choose electors for the Electoral College instead, a move that would illegally disregard the will of the people.
“The wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice was very much a part of the seditious conspiracy,” Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett said when that information was made public.
Notably, Thomas’s husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was the lone dissenter in a case regarding whether or not Trump’s presidential records should be shared with the January 6 committee; Thomas alone voted in favor of barring the committee from viewing the records. Many have denounced his involvement in the case as a conflict of interest due to the high likelihood that his wife’s correspondences with Trump officials would be included in the documents.
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