Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was in touch with attorney John Eastman, who floated the theory that Mike Pence, in his role as Vice President, could block confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory.
The two exchanged emails, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. The releases show that Thomas’ efforts to overturn the election result and keep Donald Trump in office were even more extensive than known.
It was also reported that she was in touch with then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and dozens of Arizona state lawmakers about the 2020 election.
Now the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot is debating whether to devote part of the public hearings to investigating Thomas’s role.
The panel recently received the emails between Thomas and Eastman, the Post reported.
Last week, a federal judge ordered Eastman to turn over more than a hundred documents to the committee after the attorney tried to prevent her release.
Eastman, who was once a clerk for Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, outlined scenarios for Biden being denied the presidency in legal memos and in an Oval Office meeting with Trump and Pence on Jan. 4, according to previous reports.
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has been in touch with attorney John Eastman, who floated the theory that Mike Pence, in his role as vice president, could block confirmation of Joe Biden’s win, new email News shows – above, the Thomas couple at the September 2019 State Dinner at the White House
Attorney John Eastman, who once served as clerk for Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, outlined scenarios for denying Joe Biden the presidency
Reports of Ginni Thomas’ activism raised questions about whether Justce Thomas should have withdrawn from a Supreme Court case involving the election.
She exchanged at least 29 text messages with Meadows between November 2020 and mid-January 2021 as Trump’s allies worked desperately to keep him in office.
And a report last week revealed that she had emailed 29 Arizona state legislators, urging them to choose their own constituents and ignore Joe Biden’s victory in that state.
Judge Thomas has been involved in at least nine rulings related to the 2020 election. He has also ruled on cases in which Trump has fought attempts by congressional investigators to get hold of the former president’s records.
But Ginni Thomas said the two keep their jobs separate.
“Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t include him in my work,” she told conservative publication Free Bacon in March.
Meanwhile, Thursday’s hearing will focus on Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence into refusing to count and confirm the election count. It is the vice president’s ceremonial role to oversee the formal confirmation of the presidential election.
Greg Jacob, who served as Pence’s attorney, and retired US Circuit Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, who was an informal counsel, are scheduled to testify in person at the third of what is expected to be six public hearings the committee has scheduled.
Committee assistants told CNN that Thursday’s hearing will focus on how Trump has been driving the pressure campaign against Pence, even though attorneys in the White House Attorney’s Office have told him Pence does not have the authority to unilaterally undermine the election results.
The committee teased the hearing earlier this week, showing video testimony from former White House Counsel Eric Herschmann, who said he told Eastman on Jan. 7 to “get a great criminal lawyer.”
In the days leading up to the Jan. 6 certification, Trump delivered a series of tweets demanding that Pence use his position to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election defeat.
Pence had already told the President he had no such power.
However, Eastman wrote a memo arguing that Pence could tumble election results while overseeing electoral college count certification on Jan. 6.
Eastman’s memo outlined a scenario in which Pence would disregard the electoral college votes of seven states — thereby ensuring no candidate received the 270 electoral college votes needed to be declared the winner.
The election would then be decided by the House of Representatives.
Each state delegation would then have had one vote for the president, and since Republicans controlled 26 state delegations, a majority could have voted for Trump to win the election.
Thursday’s hearing on the Jan. 6 insurgency will focus on Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on Mike Pence to overturn the election results
Constitutional scholars and Pence himself disagreed with Eastman’s interpretation of the vice president’s role in the largely ceremonial process.
Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, told CNN on Wednesday that Pence had done his duty by confirming the election results.
“He knew it from the start, and I think he was clear about the president and our office was clear about how we view his role as well. I think you know that any conservative in a limited government doesn’t want the idea that our founders thought that any person had been vested with enough authority to overturn election results. So I think he was turning to what the Constitution says,” Short told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
“He did his duty. He swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. He swore an oath to God to uphold the Constitution just as our men and women in uniform do,” he said.