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Ginni Thomas

The Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection is in possession of dozens of text messages sent by Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The texts were reportedly obtained through voluntary disclosure by Meadows late last year before he ceased cooperating.

The following is a reconstruction of the text message chains from the Washington Post’s article by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

Nov. 5: Thomas wrote: “TRUMP STING w CIA Director Steve Pieczenik, The Biggest Election Story in History, QFS-BLOCKCHAIN,” with a link to a YouTube video of a far-right commentator who has falsely claimed that the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was a “false-flag” operation. “I hope this is true; never heard anything like this before, or even a hint of it. Possible??? …Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states,” Thomas wrote.

• Thomas added: “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.”

Nov. 6, Thomas wrote: “Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”

Nov. 10, Thomas wrote: “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.”

Nov. 10, Thomas wrote: “Mark, I wanted to text you and tell you for days you are in my prayers!!” She continued by urging him to “Help This Great President stand firm” and invoking “the greatest Heist of our History.” She added: “Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta.”

• Meadows responded: “I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.”
• Thomas replied, “Tearing up and praying for you guys!!!!! So proud to know you!!”

Nov. 10, Thomas wrote: “House and Senate guys are pathetic too… only 4 GOP House members seen out in street rallies with grassroots… Gohmert, Jordan, Gosar, and Roy.” She added: “Where the heck are all those who benefited by Presidents coattails?!!!”

Nov. 13, Thomas wrote: “Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am. Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved…Don’t let her and your assets be marginalized instead…help her be the lead and the face.”

Nov. 14: Thomas sent Meadows material she said was from Connie Hair, chief of staff to Gohmert. The text message seems to quote Hair’s belief that “the most important thing you can realize right now is that there are no rules in war.” She added: “This war is psychological. PSYOP.”

Nov. 19, Thomas wrote: “The intense pressures you and our President are now experiencing are more intense than Anything Experienced (but I only felt a fraction of it in 1991).”

Nov. 19, Thomas wrote: “Mark (don’t want to wake you)…Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”

“Suggestion: You need to buck up your team on the inside, Mark,” Thomas wrote. “The lower level insiders are scared, fearful or sending out signals of hopelessness vs an awareness of the existential threat to America right now. You can buck them up, strengthen their spirits.”

“Monica Crowley,” Thomas said, referring to the conservative commentator, “may have a sense of this [from] her Nixon days.” Crowley, a top official in Trump’s Treasury Department, had been an aide to former president Richard M. Nixon years after he resigned from office in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal.

Thomas then wrote, “You guys fold, the evil just moves fast down underneath you all. Lots of intensifying threats coming to ACB and others.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett, sometimes called “ACB” by her supporters, had joined the Supreme Court in October, shortly before the election. It is unclear to what threats Thomas was referring.

Nov. 22, Thomas wrote: “Trying to understand the Sidney Powell distancing.”

“She doesn’t have anything or at least she won’t share it if she does,” Meadows texted back.

“Wow!” Thomas replied.

Meadows did not respond.

Nov. 24, Meadows wrote: “This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”

• Thomas replied: “Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!”

Nov. 24, Thomas sent Meadows a video from Parler that referred to Glenn Beck.

“If you all cave to the elites, you have to know that many of your 73 million feel like what Glenn is expressing,” Thomas wrote.

She said Trump risked his supporters growing disenchanted to the point of walking away from politics. “Me included,” she wrote. “I think I am done with politics, and I don’t think I am alone, Mark.”

Meadows replied three minutes later: “I don’t know what you mean by caving to the elites.”

Thomas responded: “I can’t see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud. Just going with one more thing with no frickin consequences… the whole coup and now this… we just cave to people wanting Biden to be anointed? Many of us can’t continue the GOP charade.”

After continued back-and-forth, Meadows wrote, “You’re preaching to the choir. Very demoralizing.”

Jan. 10, Thomas wrote: “We are living through what feels like the end of America…Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in listening mode to see where to fight with our teams. Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!!”

“Amazing times,” she added. “The end of Liberty.”

The Select Committee has been debating whether to call Ginni Thomas to testify “for several weeks,” according to the New York Times.

The panel’s Republican vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, has led the charge in holding Mr. Trump to account for his efforts to overturn the election, but has wanted to avoid any aggressive effort that, in her view, could unfairly target Justice Thomas, the senior member of the Supreme Court…On Friday, despite the potential for political backlash, Ms. Cheney indicated she has no objection to the panel asking Ms. Thomas for a voluntary interview.

The trove of messages sent by Ginni also brings into question her husband’s ability to rule impartially on the highest court in the nation. Unlike all other federal judges, the justices of the Supreme Court are not subject to a code of ethical conduct. Congress could impose a code of ethics on the Court, but has so far been hesitant to do so given the separation of powers and desire to maintain an independent judiciary. There is nothing stopping the Supreme Court justices from developing their own ethical code, however.

Should Justice Thomas have recused from any and all cases that touched on former President Trump and the 2020 election? If the Supreme Court operated under the same ethics rules as the rest of the judiciary, yes he should have.

28 U.S. Code § 455 – Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge

(a)Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

(b)He shall also disqualify himself in the following circumstances:

(1)Where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding;

Code of Conduct for United States Judges:

(C) Disqualification.

(1) A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to instances in which:

(a) the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding;

(c) the judge knows that the judge, individually or as a fiduciary, or the judge’s spouse or minor child residing in the judge’s household, has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding;

While Ginni’s text messages may be the most extreme example of bias and prejudice to date, her behavior is hardly new. In 2019 she gave an award to an anti-abortion activist who went on to file an amicus brief supporting restrictions on abortion in Louisiana. Ginni also bestowed an award on Mark Meadows and Cleta Mitchell, both of whom are challenging Select Committee subpoenas in court and whose communications are likely part of White House records held by the National Archives and Records Administration. Earlier this year, Thomas was the only noted dissent in a Supreme Court ruling granting the Select Committee access to the Trump White House’s records and communications.

Ms. Thomas’s efforts, and her husband’s refusal to respond appropriately, have been haunting the court for years, but this latest conflagration shouldn’t be a close call. “The texts are the narrowest way of looking at this,” Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor and one of the nation’s foremost legal-ethics experts, told [NYT]. “She signed up for Stop the Steal. She was part of the team, and that team had an interest in how the court would rule. That’s all I need to know.” He said he has over the years resisted calling for Justice Thomas’s recusal based on his wife’s actions, “but they’ve really abused that tolerance.”

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Criminal contempt

The January 6th Select Committee is holding a meeting tonight at 7:30 pm (eastern) to begin contempt proceedings for two former White House aides: Dan Scavino, Jr. and Peter Navarro. Read the contempt report here.

Scavino, who served as Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, was subpoenaed by the Committee in September. According to the subpoena letter, Scavino was with Trump on January 5 and 6, “when he and others were considering how to convince Members of Congress not to certify the election for Joe Biden.”

Navarro was subpoenaed just last month and publicly refused to comply with the summons.

Based on publicly available information…you, then a White House trade advisor, reportedly worked with Steve Bannon and others to develop and implement a plan to delay Congress’s certification of , and ultimately change the outcome of, the November 2020 presidential election. In your book, you reportedly described this plan as the “Green Bay Sweep” and stated that it was designed as the “last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.” In an interview, you reportedly added that former President Trump was “on board with the strategy”, as were “more than 100” members of Congress including Representatives Paul Gosar and Senator Ted Cruz.

Should the panel approve the contempt report, the full House would also have to vote to hold Navarro and Scavino in contempt, sending the referral to the Justice Department for potential criminal charges. While the DOJ brought criminal contempt charges against Steve Bannon within three weeks, it has so far failed to bring charges against Mark Meadows more than three months later.

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Mo Brooks

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) has been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump over the years, even speaking at the rally preceding the Jan. 6th insurrection wearing body armor. The two appear to have broken off their relationship last week, however, in a very public squabble over Brooks’ Senate candidacy.

Until the addition of two serious Republican candidates—Mike Durant, a retired Army helicopter pilot, and former Business Council of Alabama President Katie Britt—Brooks was the front-runner in the race to replace retiring Senator Richard Shelby. At the time, with poll numbers above 40%, Trump endorsed Brooks as a “great Conservative Republican leader, who will stand up for America First”.

Now, having lost nearly 25% of support in less than a year, Trump decided to rescind his endorsement. “Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, ‘Put that behind you,’” Trump said in a statement.

Brooks did not take Trump’s un-endorsement lightly. In his own statement, Brooks revealed information that the January 6th Select Committee will likely find very interesting:

President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency. As a lawyer, I’ve repeatedly advised President Trump that January 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asks. Period.

Trump reportedly asked Brooks to “remove Joe Biden from the White House” on multiple occasions over the past six months.

“I know what the legal remedy for a contested presidential election is,” he continued. “There is one and only one per the Constitution and U. S. Code and it occurs on the first Jan. 6 after each presidential election. Period. Game over after January 6.”