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Virginia Ginny Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has pushed 29 Arizona Republicans – 27 more than ever – to overturn Joe Biden’s victory and “elect” presidential voters, according to emails from The Washington. post.
The Post reported last month that Thomas sent emails to two members of Arizona House in November and December 2020, urging them to help undo Biden’s victory by electing presidential voters – a responsibility that belongs to Arizona voters according to the state. legislation. Thomas sent the messages using FreeRoots, an online platform designed to make it easier to send pre-written emails to a number of selected officials.
Democrats have renewed calls for a code of ethics for the US Supreme Court amid growing scrutiny by Judge Thomas and his wife. (Video: The Washington Post)
New documents show that Thomas did use the platform to reach many lawmakers at once. On November 9, she sent identical emails to 20 Arizona House members and seven Arizona senators. This represents more than half of the Republican members of the state legislature at the time.
The message just days after media outlets convened the Biden race in Arizona and across the country, called on lawmakers to “stand firmly under political and media pressure” and said responsibility for electing voters was “yours and yours alone.” They had “the power to fight fraud” and “to ensure that voters are elected,” the email said.
Among the deputies who received the email was the then rapper. Anthony Kern, a Stop the Steal supporter who lost his re-election candidacy in November 2020 and then joined US envoy Louis Homer (R-Tex.) And others as a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence, a recent attempt to undo Biden’s victory. Kern was photographed in front of the Capitol during the January 6 riots, but said he did not enter the building, according to local media reports.
Kern did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. He is seeking his party’s nomination for a seat in the Arizona Senate and was backed by former President Donald Trump.
On December 13, the day before members of the Electoral College voted and sealed Biden’s victory, Thomas sent an email to 22 members of the House and a senator. “Before you elect your state’s voters.” “Think about what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” the email said. It has to do with a video of a man urging lawmakers in the states to “fix things” and “not to succumb to cowardice.”
House Russell spokesman Russell Bowers and lawmaker Sean Bolick, the two previously identified recipients, told The Post in May that Thomas’s scope had nothing to do with their decisions on how to deal with allegations of electoral fraud.
But the revelation that Ginny Thomas is directly involved in pressuring them to repeal the popular vote – an act unprecedented in the modern age – has raised questions about whether her husband should step down in the 2020 presidential election. you undermine. Ginny Thomas’ status as a leading conservative political activist sets her apart from other spouses of Supreme Court justices.
Ginny Thomas did not respond to requests for comment on this report. She has long insisted that she and her husband work in separate professional canvases.
A Supreme Court spokeswoman did not answer questions about Clarence Thomas.
The Post received emails under the Arizona Public Records Act, which – unlike laws in some other key states for 2020 – allows the public to access emails, text messages and other written communications to and from state lawmakers.
In March, The Post and CBS News received text messages that Ginny Thomas sent in the weeks after the 2020 election to Mark Meadows, then-Trump’s chief of staff. Reports say Thomas is spreading false allegations and calling on Meadows to continue fighting for Trump to stay in the White House.
“This conflict of interest is just screaming at you,” said Adam B. Schiff (D-California), who served on the House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol to MSNBC in response to a May report by The Post. revealing emails to Bolik and Bowers.
Schiff cited Clarence Thomas’ decision not to withdraw when Trump went to the Supreme Court to try to block the House committee’s access to his White House records. The Supreme Court refused to block the issuance of these documents. Thomas, who sided with Trump, was the only justice who disagreed.
“Here you have the wife of a Supreme Court judge,” Schiff said, trying to get Arizona to illegally reject the votes of millions. And also, to add to that, her husband in the Supreme Court, who is writing a dissent in a case that challenges the provision of records to Congress that may have revealed some of those same emails.
Following a May article, Mark Paolletta, a longtime ally of the Thomas, who, as a member of the George W. Bush administration, played a role in establishing Clarence Thomas in the Supreme Court, confirmed that Ginny Thomas had signed the emails, but he tried to minimize them. your role.
“Ginny signed her name in a pre-written letter that was signed by thousands of citizens and sent to state lawmakers across the country,” Paoleta wrote on Twitter on May 20. He described Thomas’s activities as “a private citizen who joins the writing of a letter campaign” and added sarcastically: “How disturbing, what a threat!”
The letter-writing campaigns were organized on FreeRoots.com, which is advertised as a platform to strengthen local advocacy on the political spectrum. A review of the publications on its archived web pages shows that it was widely used in late 2020 by groups seeking to overturn the results of the presidential election.
One of these groups was Every Legal Vote, which organized the campaign to send the message that Ginny Thomas sent on November 9th. In those first days after the Nov. 3 election, Every Legal Vote described itself online as “a love affair of American citizens, in partnership with United in Purpose,” according to web pages maintained by Wayback Machine on the Internet archive. United in Purpose, which uses data to stimulate conservative Christian voters, has hosted lunches in recent years at which Thomas presented his Impact Awards to right-wing leaders.
On December 14, 2020, Biden voters in Arizona voted after the election results were certified by Secretary of State Katie Hobbes (D) and Gov. Doug Ducey (R).
Trump’s voters met in Arizona that day and signed a document declaring themselves “properly elected and qualified state voters.” One of them was Kern, the outgoing representative.
Kern was among more than a dozen lawmakers who signed a letter to Congress the same day calling for US votes to go to Trump or “be annulled completely until a full forensic audit is done.”
The lawmakers’ letter was evidence in the Kern and Homert case, asking a federal court to rule that Pence has “exclusive power and sole discretion” to decide which electoral votes to count for a state. The plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to intervene after the case was dismissed in lower courts. The day after the January 6 uprising, the court refused with an unsigned order.
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