The January 6 House Select Committee now believes that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, played an “extensive” role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and is now preparing to focus their attention on her, according to The Washington Post.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has obtained email correspondence between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and lawyer John Eastman, who played a key role in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, according to three people involved in the committee’s investigation.
The emails show that Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election were more extensive than previously known, two of the people said. The three declined to provide details and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The committee’s members and staffers are now discussing whether to spend time during their public hearings exploring Ginni Thomas’s role in the attempt to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, the three people said. The Washington Post previously reported that the committee had not sought an interview with Thomas and was leaning against pursuing her cooperation with its investigation.
Justice Thomas, it should be noted, was the only member of the high court who voted to block the release of White House records to the House Select Committee, writing a dissent in which he sided with the Trump administration. Since then, there have been calls for him to recuse himself from any decisions regarding the election that come before the court. So far, he has refused to do so and Chief Justice John Roberts has not insisted on such a move.
The Jan. 6 panel will meet in public session again this afternoon at 1:00 p.m. ET and is expected to focus on the pressure applied to former Vice President Mike Pence by failed, one-term former President Donald Trump and other White House officials to delay certification of the 2020 electoral votes.