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- The January 6 committee may seek the testimony of Clarence Thomas’ wife, CNN and The New York Times reported.
- The news comes after the committee obtained text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows.
- Sources familiar with the matter said the panel has yet to make any plans to summon Thomas.
The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot is weighing whether to seek the testimony of Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, CNN and The New York Times reported Friday.
The news comes after the January 6 committee obtained text messages between Ginni Thomas and former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in which Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, urged him to challenge the 2020 election.
“Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” Thomas wrote in one of the 29 messages obtained by the January 6 committee.
Some members of the House panel suggested inviting Thomas to voluntarily appear before the committee or issuing a subpoena to compel her testimony, sources familiar with the conversations told CNN, but the panel has yet to make plans to do either.
The texts, released on Thursday, come after Thomas acknowledged that she attended former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the pro-Trump mob breaching the Capitol on January 6, 2021, but said she got cold and left before Trump took the stage.
The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker previously reported that Ginni Thomas had ties to the organizers of the January 6 rally, which she has since denied.
“I played no role with those who were planning and leading the Jan. 6 events,” Thomas said in an interview with the conservative news outlet, the Washington Free Beacon, earlier this month.
According to The Times, the House committee is also debating the political implications of summoning the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice in connection with the Capitol insurrection. Despite the potential backlash, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, an outspoken critic of Trump, said she wasn’t opposed to seeking Thomas’ testimony, per The Times report.
Ginni Thomas did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. A representative for Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the January 6 committee, did not immediately respond to Insider’s emails.
Though Thomas is actively involved in politics and her husband sits on the nation’s highest court, she told the Free Beacon that the couple has “our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too.”
“Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” she said.
In January, Justice Thomas was the sole dissenter in a Supreme Court ruling that rejected Trump’s request to withhold White House presidential records from the January 6 committee. He did not provide any context behind his decision.
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