- The January 6 panel plans to ask Ginni Thomas for an interview, multiple news outlets reported.
- The move comes after it was publicly revealed that Thomas pushed Mark Meadows to challenge the 2020 election.
- Thomas' text messages to Meadows have also raised concerns about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' work.
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot plans to request an interview from Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a longtime conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, multiple news outlets reported Monday.
CNN reported that members of the committee believe they should seek testimony from Thomas after it was publicly revealed last Thursday that she sent several text messages to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to overturn the 2020 election results. The Washington Post and CBS News reported a total of 29 texts exchanged between Meadows and Thomas from November 2020 and January 2021, all of which were obtained by the panel.
Thomas is one of several people that the committee is interested in talking to for its probe, and the panel has been "moving aggressively on many fronts, conducting depositions, sometimes multiple depositions, almost every day," a source told CNN. The decision to request an interview with Thomas is particularly notable because the committee has been divided over whether to do so over concerns about appearing to target Justice Thomas, The New York Times reported last Friday.
The newly revealed text messages detail how Thomas pushed Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn Joe Biden's win, which she called "the greatest Heist of our History." In one message sent on November 6, 2020, Thomas told Meadows that then-President Donald Trump should not concede the election.
"Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back," she wrote to Meadows, per The Post.
In another message sent on November 10, 2020, days after the major news networks declared then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election, Thomas wrote to Meadows: "Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!"
"You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America's constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History," the text continued, per The Post.
The text messages have raised concerns about a potential conflict of interest for Clarence Thomas and his work on Supreme Court cases related to the January 6 investigation. In light of the texts, some Democrats have called on the justice to recuse himself from any such cases. Republicans have said that recusal from cases should be up to the justice, the longest-serving sitting member of the Supreme Court.
Clarence Thomas has also come under scrutiny over his objection to a Supreme Court order released two months ago, in which the court's majority rejected Trump's bid to withhold White House records from the January 6 committee. Thomas was the lone dissenter.