Top headline: Los Angeles Times, 9/29/2022
Bottom headline: New York Times, 9/29/2022
New York Times excerpt:
Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas and a conservative activist who pushed to overturn the 2020 election, told the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that she never discussed those efforts with her husband, during a closed-door interview in which she continued to perpetuate the false claim that the election was stolen.
7/25/2022 update starts here
Headline: Business Insider, 7/24/2022
Thomas, who was briefly a member of Lifespring — a controversial group that was part of the "human potential movement" — before becoming an anti-cult activist, has surprised many who once knew her by aligning herself with far-right conspiracy theory groups such as QAnon that some say have cult-like qualities.
Nonetheless, Steven Hassan, a former-cult-member-turned-cult-expert who worked with Thomas during her anti-cult activism days, told Insider he is not surprised by her involvement with the far-right conspiracy theory movement.
"Ginni Thomas was in a cult, and anyone who has ever been in a cult is vulnerable to another cult if they haven't properly counseled and done their homework," Hassan said.
6/21/2022 update starts here
Headline: Washington Post, 6/20/2022
While text messages and emails unearthed in recent weeks have shown that Thomas was involved in those efforts before Jan. 6, her attendance at the Orlando gathering indicates that her alliance with election deniers continued even after Joe Biden was inaugurated. Frontliners has hosted hard-right lawmakers, insisted on strict secrecy and proclaimed that the nation’s top enemy is the “radical fascist left,” according to social media posts, court filings and interviews with several people involved in the group.
One photograph from the Orlando event shows Bryant posing with Thomas. Others show Thomas wearing a name tag decorated with a yellow ribbon she and others wore saying “Trouble Maker.”
6/16/2022 update starts here
Headline: Washington Post, 6/15/2022
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.
6/12/2022 update starts here
Headline: Washington Post, 6/10/2022
New documents show that Thomas indeed used the platform to reach many lawmakers simultaneously. On Nov. 9, she sent identical emails to 20 members of the Arizona House and seven Arizona state senators. That represents more than half of the Republican members of the state legislature at the time.
The message, just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, urged lawmakers to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure” and claimed that the responsibility to choose electors was “yours and yours alone.” They had “power to fight back against fraud” and “ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen,” the email said.
5/20/2022 update starts here
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona lawmakers after the 2020 election to set aside Joe Biden’s popular-vote victory and choose “a clean slate of Electors,” according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.
The emails, sent by Ginni Thomas to a pair of lawmakers on Nov. 9, 2020, argued that legislators needed to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud. Though she did not mention either candidate by name, the context was clear.
Just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, Thomas urged the lawmakers to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure.” She told the lawmakers the responsibility to choose electors was “yours and yours alone” and said they have “power to fight back against fraud.”
3/27/2022 update, "LOCK THEM UP: 'Best friends' Ginni and Clarence Thomas", starts here.
Clarence and Ginni Thomas
New York Times, 3/26/2022
The Thomases have been a fiercely close couple for decades. In his memoir, Justice Thomas wrote that they were “one being — an amalgam” and called her his “best friend.” She often uses similar language to describe her husband.
In one of his texts to Ms. Thomas, Mr. Meadows called the election a “fight of good versus evil” and added: “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues.”
“Thank you!! Needed that!” Ms. Thomas replied. “This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!” [emphasis added]
3/25/2022 update starts here
Meet Ginni Thomas, insurrectionist
New York Times, 3/24/2022
In the weeks between the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent a barrage of text messages imploring President Donald J. Trump’s chief of staff to take steps to overturn the vote, according to a person with knowledge of the texts.
In one message sent in the days after the election, she urged the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to “release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down,” invoking a slogan popular on the right that refers to a web of conspiracy theories that Trump supporters believed would overturn the election.
Original 2/25/2022 post starts here
New York Times, 2/22/2022
As Trump insisted, without evidence, that fraud had cheated him of victory, conservative groups rushed to rally behind him. The council stood out, however, not only because of its pedigree but also because one of its newest leaders was Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas and a longtime activist in right-wing circles. She had taken on a prominent role at the council during the Trump years and by 2019 had joined the nine-member board of C.N.P. Action, an arm of the council organized as a 501(c)4 under a provision of the tax code that allows for direct political advocacy. It was C.N.P. Action that circulated the November “action steps” document, the existence of which has not been previously reported. It instructed members to pressure Republican lawmakers into challenging the election results and appointing alternate slates of electors: “Demand that they not abandon their Constitutional responsibilities during a time such as this.”
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