- Ginni Thomas pushed a QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theory in texts with Mark Meadows.
- Thomas claimed "ballot fraud co-conspirators" were on barges at Guantánamo Bay to be tried for sedition.
- Thomas shared several QAnon-related conspiracy theories in texts obtained by the Washington Post.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife floated an outlandish conspiracy that members of the "Biden crime family" and "ballot fraud co-conspirators" were being sent to barges off of Guantánamo Bay to face military trials for sedition in newly-uncovered text messages with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, texted Meadows in the days after the 2020 election, according to the messages obtained by the House Committee investigating January 6 and reported on by the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and CBS News' Robert Costa.
"Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition," Thomas wrote in a message on November 5, 2020, two days after the presidential election, according to the Post.
Adherents of the Q-Anon conspiracy movement spread those and similar conspiracy theories throughout late 2020 and early 2021, falsely claiming online that officials including Hillary Clinton and Rep. Adam Schiff had been rounded up in mass arrests, sent to Guantánamo, and executed for treason.
No Biden allies, elected officials, bureaucrats, or journalists were ever sent to Guantánamo or put on trial for sedition in connection to the 2020 election.
Thomas espoused QAnon-adjacent theories in many of the nearly 30 texts reported on by the Post.
The first message Thomas sent Meadows referenced a since-removed YouTube video from Steve Pieczenik, a conspiracy theorist who has previously espoused the baseless theory that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a "false flag" operation meant to gin up support for gun restrictions.
In another message reported by the Post, Thomas referenced a popular QAnon theory that Trump had deliberately "watermarked" mail ballots to find potential voter fraud.
"Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states," she said.
The partisan review of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, Arizona commissioned by the state Senate and conducted by the now-defunct firm Cyber Ninjas searched for such marks, but failed to uncover any evidence of ballots being watermarked.
In other texts, Thomas urged Meadows not to concede the election, privately trashed Republicans in Congress, rallied behind controversial lawyer Sidney Powell, and told Meadows to "Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down."
A New York Times story in February reported that Thomas had been involved in the planning of the rallies on January 6, including playing a "uniting" role between different rally organizers.
Thomas downplayed her connection to January 6 rally organizers in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon and said she left the Save America rally before Trump's speech because of the cold weather. But the texts show her deep interest in trying to overturn the 2020 election — in addition to her fervent belief in conspiracy theories that originated with the QAnon movement.