In the weeks after the 2020 election, the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas – who is married to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas – repeatedly implored Donald Trump’s chief of staff to help overturn the results, according to text messages obtained by the Washington Post and CBS News.
In one of 29 messages seen by the news outlets, Thomas wrote to Mark Meadows on 10 November: “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 messages shed light on Thomas’s direct line to the White House and how she used it to push the “big lie” that Trump had won the election – with Meadows’ apparent support, the Post reported. The exchanges are among 2,320 texts Meadows handed to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
“This is a fight of good versus evil,” Meadows wrote in a 24 November message. “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.”
Meadows’ lawyer, George Terwilliger III, acknowledged the messages’ existence to the Post but said they did not raise “legal issues”.
Thomas did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment. She has previously said that she does not discuss her activist work with her husband, and the messages do not mention him or the supreme court, according to the Post.
Terwilliger and Thomas did not immediately reply to requests for comment from the Guardian. Messages left for the supreme court’s public information office were not immediately returned.
When the supreme court rejected Trump challenges over the election in February 2021, Clarence Thomas dissented, calling the decision “baffling”, the Post notes.
The text messages – 21 of which are from Thomas and eight from Meadows – contain references to conspiracy theories. Thomas, for instance, highlighted a claim popular among QAnon followers that the president had watermarked certain ballots as a means of identifying fraud.
She also suggested the Bidens were behind supposed fraud. “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators … 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,” she wrote.
Thomas seemed to condemn some Republicans in Congress for being insufficiently loyal to Trump. “House and Senate guys are pathetic too… only 4 GOP House members seen out in street rallies with grassroots,” she wrote in a 10 November message, adding later that night: “Where the heck are all those who benefited by Presidents coattails?!!!”
Other messages refer to conservative commentators and lawyers who supported Trump’s cause, including Sidney Powell, whom Thomas apparently wanted to be “the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team. Powell was behind a slate of lawsuits seeking to overturn the election and faces investigation by the Texas State Bar Association over alleged false claims in court. Thomas expressed repeated support for Powell even as she became a divisive figure in pro-Trump circles, the Post notes. “Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved,” she wrote on 13 November.
“Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta,” Thomas urged Meadows in another message, apparently referring to the commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and Dan Bongino, and Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who backed Trump’s claims in Georgia.
“I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left,” Meadows replied. “Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.”
Thomas has acknowledged attending Trump’s rally before the Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, though she says she left before the then president spoke. She condemned the ensuing violence.
