Topline
Conservative activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, emailed lawmakers in Wisconsin urging them to challenge the state’s 2020 presidential election results, the Washington Post reports, the latest in a string of reports chronicling Thomas’ wide-ranging efforts to overturn the 2020 results even as her husband considered cases on them.
Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, moderates a panel discussion at the … [+]
Key Facts
Citing emails obtained under public records laws, the Post reports Thomas emailed at least two Wisconsin lawmakers on November 9, after it was declared President Joe Biden had won the battleground state.
Thomas urged state Sen. Kathy Bernier and state Rep. Gary Tauchen to “reflect on the awesome authority granted to you by our Constitution” and “take action to ensure that a clean slate of electors is chosen for our state,” the Post reports.
Thomas sent the email using a platform called FreeRoots that allows pre-written emails to be sent to multiple elected officials, the Post reports, noting Thomas’ email was a form letter that more than 30 people sent to Bernier after the election.
Bernier told the Post she did not realize Thomas emailed her but said the activist “has a First Amendment right to speak her mind,” though the lawmaker also noted there was no evidence of voter fraud in Wisconsin that would have justified overturning the election results.
The Wisconsin emails were sent around the same time that Thomas emailed 29 lawmakers in Arizona encouraging them to overturn the results, the Post previously reported.
Thomas’ attorney Mark Paoletta has not yet responded to a request for comment, but he has previously defended her emails to Arizona lawmakers, saying she did not organize the email campaign to them and did not draft the letters she sent, but rather “simply pushed a few buttons.”
Chief Critic
“Citizens have a First Amendment right to raise [election fraud claims] with public officials and encourage leaders to investigate the matter fully. That is all Mrs. Thomas did—as a private citizen,” Paoletta wrote in a letter to the House January 6 Committee about Thomas’ emails with Arizona lawmakers, adding she “enjoys the same right as everyone else to petition the government.”
Tangent
The Supreme Court, including Thomas’ husband Clarence Thomas, considered multiple cases involving Wisconsin’s election results in the aftermath of the 2020 race, including lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign and far-right attorney Sidney Powell and a Texas-led suit that challenged the results in Wisconsin and other battleground states. The court ultimately declined to take up any of the cases, and Ginni Thomas has previously said she and her husband keep their work separate from each other.
Key Background
Thomas has drawn widespread scrutiny for her political activism in recent months as the Supreme Court has taken up divisive political issues like guns and abortion, and criticism of her has sharply intensified as reports have emerged of the role she played in the post-election period. Emails and text messages obtained by House investigators show Thomas corresponded after the election with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows encouraging efforts to overturn the results, as well as Trump attorney John Eastman, who was directly involved with former President Donald Trump’s post-election efforts. (Thomas and Paoletta have defended those exchanges, arguing she was just asking Eastman to speak to a group she’s involved with and her texts with Meadows are “entirely unremarkable.”) The justice’s wife has also said she briefly attended the rally on January 6 that preceded the attack on the Capitol building, and she’s reportedly involved with a group that pushed a “fake electors” scheme in which Republicans sent false slates of electors to Congress claiming Trump won their states. The House January 6 Committee has asked Thomas to testify and provide documents to investigators, but while she initially said she intended to comply with the request, she then changed her mind and has refused to cooperate with the investigation, as Paoletta argued the committee lacked a “sufficient basis” to seek her testimony.
Further Reading
Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory (Washington Post)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/09/01/ginni-thomas-wife-of-supreme-court-justice-reportedly-pressured-wisconsin-lawmakers-to-overturn-2020-election/