Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told the House Jan. 6 committee that she regretted the text messages she sent to President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, urging him to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“I regret the tone and content of these texts,” she told Rep. Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, according to a transcript of testimony before the Jan. 6 committee on Sept. 29. The transcript was among a batch released Friday by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“And other than that, it was an emotional time, and | was texting with a friend who | had known a long time,” Thomas, who is known as Ginni, said. “So I really find my language imprudent and my choices of sending the context of these emails unfortunate.”
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Her exchanges with the former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, were revealed in March by the Washington Post and CBS News. They were provided to the committee by Meadows.
“Do not concede,” she said in one message. “It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”
“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” she wrote in another. “The Left tastes their power!!! 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.”
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Trump has claimed repeatedly without evidence that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to President Joe Biden, was stolen. His attorney general, William Barr, said in an interview with NBC News that Trump became enraged when Barr told him “that all this stuff was bulls--- ... about election fraud.
Thomas told the committee that she wished that she had not sent the texts and that they had not become public.
“You know, I would take them all back if I could today,” she said.
Thomas is a conservative activist focused on politics and public policy work. She said in her interview with the committee that her husband is uninterested in politics and does not speak to her about cases pending at the Supreme Court.
“Regarding the 2020 election, | did not speak with him at all about the details of my volunteer campaign activities, and | did not speak with him at all about the details of my post-election activities, which were minimal in any event,” she said.
She said her husband was unaware of her texts with Meadows, which numbered 29, until they were leaked while he was in the hospital fighting an infection.
The Jan. 6 committee ended its 18-month investigation this month first by accusing Trump of inciting insurrection and other crimes in a referral to the Justice Department for possible prosecution and then by releasing a final report that placed the blame on the U.S. Capitol attack on Trump.
It also released transcripts of witnesses, ranging from the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump to Cassidy Hutchinson, a Meadows’ aide who said a Trump-affiliated lawyer tried to steer her testimony.
Thomas also told the committee that she was frustrated with former Vice President Mike Pence, whom she thought might concede the election earlier than Trump would do.
“And | wanted to hear Vice President Pence talk more about the fraud and irregularities in certain States that thought was still lingering,” she said.
She said she had not been focused on Pence’s role on Jan. 6 as Congress certified Biden’s victory over Trump. Trump had tried to convince the then-vice president that he had the power to unilaterally overturn the election results, a position Pence rejected.
