Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Leaders of the Jan. 6 select committee say the time has come to interview Virginia \u201cGinni\u201d Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, about her connections to Donald Trump\u2019s attempts to overturn the election.<\/p>\n
Panel Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) agreed Thursday that the committee needed to delve into Thomas\u2019 role. Thompson\u2019s comments and Cheney\u2019s agreement \u2014 confirmed to POLITICO by an aide \u2014 coincided with news reports suggesting Thomas had been in touch with at least one key architect of Trump\u2019s bid to cling to power: Attorney John Eastman.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, the information we have come upon \u2026 it’s time for us to invite her to come and talk,\u201d Thompson told reporters Thursday. The emails might come up \u201cat some point\u201d in their hearings, he said, though they were still in the \u201cdiscovery phase.\u201d<\/p>\n
But an invitation to Thomas might come in the next few weeks, he added.<\/p>\n
The Washington Post and New York Times both reported late Wednesday that Thomas and Eastman had exchanged emails, though the timing of their conversations remains unclear, per the outlets. The Times also reported that Eastman had expressed, in an email with another Trump campaign attorney, insight into internal Supreme Court discussions related to the election results. The court, he said, according to the Times, was engaged in a \u201cheated\u201d debate about whether to take up election-related lawsuits on the eve of Jan. 6.<\/p>\n
The committee has faced questions about Ginni Thomas since March, when the Washington Post and CBS published text messages she exchanged with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after Trump\u2019s defeat in the 2020 election. Thomas, who appeared to espouse unfounded conspiracy theories about the results, pushed Meadows to continue fighting to reverse the outcome and indicated she had been in touch with others in Trump\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n
Those texts immediately raised questions about whether Thomas had also talked to Eastman, who clerked for her husband in the 1990s. In deposition testimony from Greg Jacob, a top aide to former Vice President Mike Pence, the select committee learned that Eastman had expressed confidence<\/a> that Justice Clarence Thomas would support a fringe theory that Pence could single-handedly prevent Joe Biden\u2019s election.<\/p>\n Jacob told the select committee that when Eastman pushed that idea, Jacob replied, \u201cIf this case got to the Supreme Court, we\u2019d lose 9-0, wouldn\u2019t we, if we actually took your position and it got up there?\u201d<\/p>\n Eastman said he actually believed the court would vote 7-2, Jacob recalled.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I said, \u2018Who are the two?\u2019 And he said, \u2018Well, I think maybe Clarence Thomas.\u2019 And I said, \u2018Really? Clarence Thomas?\u2019 And so we went through a few Thomas opinions and, finally, he acknowledged, \u2018yeah, all right, it would be 9-0.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Eastman has declined to say whether his initial instinct about Thomas\u2019 support was based on contacts with either Ginni Thomas or the justice himself. When the select committee asked Eastman last year about his conversation with Jacob, Eastman invoked his right to not self-incriminate, as he did more than 100 times in his deposition with the panel.<\/p>\n