The Ginni Thomas Problem - Part II
Some Realist considerations
Ginni Thomas met with the Select Committee Investigating the January 6th Attack on the Capitol and pretty much reiterated1 what everyone already knew. She’s a full blown election denier.2
As CNN’s Jake Tapper put it:
"Even though 60 court cases, all the election boards, all the Trump-supporting governors and attorneys general and secretaries of state, et cetera, et cetera — no evidence of widespread fraud that would have swung the election in any state. That's just wild. I mean, that's just untethered from all of the facts and evidence."
But that’s hardly the weird part.
Ginni Thomas, who has made of a career as an activist working for right-wing organizations, began her interview with the January 6th panel by reading a prepared statement averring her election activities were separate from her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Ginni Thomas also went so far as to claim that she and her husband never discussed her work.
Bull. As Nick Akerman, a former AUSA3 and Watergate prosecutor, pointed out on The ReidOut on MSNBC:
"And Clarence Thomas, while she was doing all this, he was the one dissenting vote when the January 6th Committee was trying to get all of Trump's records from the White House that were at the Archives ... you have a real conflict of interest here. It's just very unusual. I can't remember any situation in the Court where a spouse has taken a political view that's basically right on the money with her husband, and they both claim they never talk about this stuff. which I find completely absurd."4
The fake elector scheme was “born” the day after the 2020 election and was being actively worked on prior to Thankgiving. It seems unlikely that the person who fleshed out the full blown legal strategy for using the congressional certification process and “alternate”, i.e. fake, slates of electors in certain Biden states to overturn the election, John Eastman, would also be a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and that would never come up in a dinner conversation between Ginni and husband Clarence. Especially since Ginni Thomas spent much of November emailing and texting fellow Trumpists toward that end.
The legal strategy of using fake electors was created in a memo between Kenneth Chesebro and James Troupis. The scheme made its way through far-Right political circles, while the lack of any proof of election fraud kept smacking Trump’s legal teams in the face in court after court.
How the Chesebro/Troupis memo got put before John Eastman and the coincidence of his having worked as a law clerk for Justice Thomas was not revealed in the press briefings from the January 6th Committee’s interview of Ginni Thomas. One would hope that bit of parallelism was not overlooked. It does not take a realist that see that the most likely conduit for John Eastman to spin his legal wheels pro-bono — at the start — for such an effort was likely Ginni Thomas.
Given the conflicts of interest that Ginni5 has brought to her husband, Justice Thomas, it’s worth noting the many criminal probes6 against Donald Trump and his penchant for litigating matters all the way to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the conflict of interest concerns come from the failure to report Ginni Thomas's income not the undue influence or appearance thereof that her employment and activism creates. Concerns about the latter would ensnare more Supreme Court Justices than just Clarence Thomas.7
Should Ginni Thomas be charged in the fake elector scheme; calls for Justice Thomas's recusal and a code of ethics for the Supreme Court will move from a political Left sentiment to a majority will demand. But count on either of those things being a policy going forward not a review of past decisions being bought and sold.
https://www.rawstory.com/ginni-thomas-2658359253/
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/29/ginni-thomas-jan-6-panel-false-election-fraud-claims-00059627
Assistant U.S. Attorney. Aterman worked for teh US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York
https://www.rawstory.com/ginni-thomas-jan-6-committee-2658362852/
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23306941/donald-trump-crimes-criminal-investigation-mar-a-lago-fbi-january-6-election-georgia-new-york
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/29/justices-spouses-conflict-of-interest-disclosures-00059549
Thank you. For another link in the chain made Clear.
All those years of marriage between the Thomas’. You’ll never make me believe that as they settle into bed for the night neither of them asked the other how their day was. “Oh! I went to a meeting about overturning the election today…. They had quiche for lunch “!! No… no one in a marriage keeps shit like this inside. As spouses we talk about all kinds of stuff…. the kids, a sibling, seeing something on tv… everything! She never talked to him about her involvement… even in passing ?? I call bullshit. He knows everything that she does and most likely vice versa. Almost as crazy as tRump declassifying docs with his mind.