RSN: The January 6 Committee Has Its Sights on Ginni Thomas. She Should Be Worried
28 September 22
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The spouse of a sitting supreme court justice allegedly tried to overturn the 2020 election. It’s hard to say which looks worse – the conflicts of interest, or the possibility that she aided a would-be insurrection
This development could open a vital inquiry into Thomas’s alleged role in seeking to thwart a peaceful transition of presidential power to Joe Biden. Just as importantly, this news renews attention on the question of whether Ginni Thomas’s radical rightwing activism influenced her husband, who weighed in on numerous 2020 election-related cases despite his conflicts of interest.
So far, congressional Democrats have sat on their hands on this issue, presumably in deference to the supreme court. But with the rightwing court taking an axe to constitutional precedent and public opinion, an investigation into the Thomases might be the only way to course-correct what’s happening to the US constitution.
We know that Ginni Thomas texted Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, between November 2020 and January 2021 urging measures to undermine Biden’s win and keep Trump in power. After Congress certified the election for Biden, she criticized former vice-president Mike Pence in a message to Meadows for refusing to disrupt the counting of electoral college votes, writing, “We are living through what feels like the end of America.”
The messages contain sly references to a “best friend”, which Ginni and Clarence Thomas have been known to call each other. In a viral Facebook post on 6 January 2021, now removed, she wrote, “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” Thomas attended the Capitol rally that day, though she has said she left before Trump’s speech at noon.
We also now know that Thomas emailed Arizona lawmakers in November and December of 2020, pushing them to devise a slate of presidential electors in defiance of Arizona voters’ choice for Biden. In an email in November, she urged Arizona legislators to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure”, claiming (wrongly) that the choice of electors was “yours and yours alone”.
On 13 December, the day before the electors cast their votes for Biden, she circulated a second email stating: “Before you choose your state’s electors … consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” and linking to a video of a man asking lawmakers not to “give in to cowardice”. On 14 December , a group of fake Trump electors met in Arizona to sign a document falsely declaring themselves the “duly elected and qualified electors” for the state.
Thomas allegedly waged a similar pressure campaign in Wisconsin. “Please stand strong in the face of media and political pressure,” she emailed two Republican lawmakers on 9 November, shortly after news outlets called the election for Biden. “Please reflect on the awesome authority granted to you by our constitution. And then please take action to ensure that a clean slate of electors is chosen for our state.”
Earlier this year, the New Yorker detailed Ginni Thomas’s deep connections to multiple rightwing groups that seek to influence the supreme court. Thomas, herself a lawyer who runs a small lobbying firm, Liberty Consulting, is on record as declaring America to be in danger due to a “deep state” and a “fascist left” peopled by “transexual fascists”. She posted about Trump’s loss on a private listserv, Thomas Clerk World, which includes approximately 120 former Clarence Thomas clerks. Artemus Ward, a political scientist at Northern Illinois University, has called the group “an elite rightwing commando movement”.
Thomas is also a director of CNP Action, a dark-money group that the New Yorker described as “connect[ing] wealthy donors with some of the most radical rightwing figures in America”, and on the advisory board of Turning Point USA, a conservative non-profit that sent busloads of protesters to the Capitol on January 6. And in 2019, she announced her partnership in Crowdsourcers, along with James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, an outfit known for producing embarrassing videos of progressives.
In 2020, Project Veritas petitioned the US supreme court to halt Massachusetts from enforcing a state law banning the secret taping of public officials. Another Crowdsourcers partner was Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who played a central role helping Trump in his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and now faces ethics charges. Mitchell was on the 2 January 2021 phone call in which Trump cajoled the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” 11,780 votes to swing the state to Trump. That effort is being criminally investigated by a grand jury in Georgia.
According to the New York Times, the January 6 committee is most interested in asking Thomas about her communications with John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who infamously penned a six-step scheme for Pence to block or delay the counting of electoral college votes. According to the committee’s leaders, Eastman also “worked to develop alternative slates of electors to stop the electoral count”.
In a March opinion in Eastman v Thompson, a federal judge in California rejected Eastman’s attempt to keep his emails from the committee, identifying Eastman as probably having collaborated with Trump in multiple federal crimes, writing: “Based on the evidence … it is more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”
The Thomases’ conflicts of interest have prompted calls for a supreme court code of conduct, which would require justices to recuse themselves from cases that might otherwise give rise to even an appearance of partiality. But it is not at all clear that Ginni Thomas is beyond the sights of criminal liability, either.
Of course, that sort of action would have to come through the justice department. Congress’s power is confined to making legislative changes. But the attorney general, Merrick Garland, has been resolute in his public commitment to enforce relevant federal laws, reiterating recently that “Rule of Law means that the law treats each of us alike: there is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless.” Ginni Thomas should be concerned.
For his part, Clarence Thomas was the only dissenting vote in a January 2021 ruling on an emergency application from Trump asking the supreme court to block the release of White House records to the January 6 Committee regarding the attack on the Capitol – records that in theory could have included messages between his wife and Meadows. He gave no reasons for his dissent.
Thomas also dissented, along with Justice Samuel Alito, from the court’s refusal to entertain a lawsuit by Texas asking that it toss out the election results in four other states – a legal “claim” that, to date, does not even exist as a matter of federal law.
Perhaps most disturbing is the court’s agreement to hear Moore v Harper this term, a case that strikes at the heart of the January 6 committee’s work. It raises a novel constitutional argument which Trump lost repeatedly in 2020: that the constitution lodges power over elections exclusively in state legislatures. If the court rules that legislatures have full power and control, it could cement unfairness in the electoral system as a matter of constitutional law, as many states are already gerrymandered to lock in power for one political party, mostly Republican.
Although Congress could legislatively add seats to the supreme court or impeach a justice, with evidence, to stave off further encroachments on individual rights and federal authority by this court, both measures would require a level of bipartisan support that is difficult to imagine.
Yet it’s impossible to predict where the further unraveling of the Ginni Thomas conflicts might lead – and whether those facts could produce another unprecedented fissure in our system of government. For now, Congress must, at the very least, peer behind the Thomases’ curtain.
McConnell, Schumer Back Bill to Prevent Efforts to Subvert Presidential Election Results
Amy B. Wang, The Washington Post
Wang writes: "Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have endorsed a bipartisan electoral count reform bill in the Senate."
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Libraries are being threatened. (photo: Vice/Getty Images)
Librarians and patrons believe the threats were part of a coordinated effort to limit information access, and come amids a recent wave of book bans.
Some of the recent threats have been directed at LGBTQ events hosted at libraries across the country. A library in a Chicago suburb canceled its drag bingo night after receiving threats earlier this month. And last week, a teen drag star was forced to cancel a book reading at a library in the Bronx after a series of homophobic threats.
Other threats seemed to have no obvious motive but come at a time when libraries and library workers have increasingly become targets of harassment. Public libraries were also closed statewide in Hawaii over the weekend due to an “unspecified threat.”
Library workers close to the events at the Denver Public Library (DPL), Nashville Public Library, and Boston Public Library confirmed that the threats were received via digital reference points that allow patrons to communicate with library workers. These services are run on software platforms powered by Springshare, and thousands of library workers use Springshare’s tools to communicate with patrons through direct chat, email, or SMS functions.
According to several Denver Public Library employees who asked not to be identified due to their proximity to the situation, there were inconsistencies in communicating about the situation to on-site workers. Meanwhile, sources say there was about an hour when the remote employees managing DPL’s online services were encouraged to remain online. Eventually, all employees were offered a paid day off.
“[Leadership] didn’t seem to have a protocol in place for receiving this kind of threat,” one DPL employee told Motherboard. The source found this lack of preparation “disappointing” considering how commonplace threats have become in the US over the years to many public institutions, including schools and hospitals.
“I don’t think [DPL’s] preparation or response to safety issues and trauma in the workplace is great overall,” the source added.
The lack of trust librarians have in their institutions to protect them from threats isn’t unique to DPL. A recent study from the New York Library Association, Urban Librarians Unite, and St. John’s University explored how public library workers in urban centers experience trauma while providing library services. The findings reflect frontline work during the pandemic and the increased need for librarians to wear multiple hats, including some social work responsibilities. While the study does not specifically address bomb or active shooter threats, the study does demonstrate that institutions have traditionally prioritized service to communities in need over the well-being of staff to the detriment of the affected staff.
Alison Macrina, executive director of the Library Freedom Project, told Motherboard that librarians have lost trust in their administrations’ ability to keep them safe during a volatile moment.
“It’s been a larger pattern through all these right-wing attacks,” Macrina told Motherboard. “Admin just like, not taking any of it seriously enough, not getting it. So their responses to these bomb threats are seen as more of the same. And also admins just not communicating through these situations [makes] the workers feel even more isolated and at risk.”
Shirley Robinson, executive director of the Texas Library Association, told Motherboard that library administrators are treading a thin line. They are responsible for serving the public by ensuring that their libraries are able to remain open and support collection guidelines and reconsideration policies. They also work with the people electing city council leaders and school board leaders to better understand the censorship issues, in addition to retaining library workers.
“It is an incredibly difficult position [for leadership],” Robinson told Motherboard. “And then for the library workers you are on the front lines, you are interacting with members of the public who may come in and just be really upset that a certain book is on the shelf. To be in that frontline position and explain to an angry patron that yeah, this book may not be here for your child, but it’s definitely here for another child or another member of the public, and you have a right to choose what you’re checking out or not.”
Macrina said that library workers are willing to give leadership room to figure out how to operate in these times.
“But at this point, it’s clear in a lot of places that there is just total denial of reality,” Macrina said.
While the motivations behind some of the hoax threats to public libraries are unspecified, many are coming from out-of-state in each case, suggesting the threats are a coordinated effort to interrupt public library events. The threats also come on the heels of a recent report which tied efforts to ban books to far-right, anti-LGBTQ advocacy organizations. According to the American Library Association, a record number of books have been challenged or removed from library shelves in the past year.
While the level of coordination is unclear at the time of reporting, library workers are now trying to figure out what it means to accept hoax threats as a normal part of their jobs.
“There’s just no easy answer for any of it right now other than to vote in November,” said Robinson.
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