Ginni Thomas tried to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory in Wisconsin, emails show

Wife of Supreme Court justice was apparently leading wide-ranging effort to influence local officials

The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was active in not just one but two states as she sought to overturn the rightful results of the 2020 election in favour of Donald Trump, new emails show.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Ginni Thomas emailed at least two elected lawmakers in Wisconsin, urging them to back the plot for a vote to “decertify” the state’s election results (which is not something the state legislature can legally do) in favour of a slate of Trump-supporting “electors” who would go to Washington and cast Electoral College votes for Mr Trump instead of Joe Biden.

The plan never bore fruit, but was in motion until the hours before January 6 when a Trump campaign lawyer contacted the top deputy to Ron Johnson, Wisconsin’s GOP senator, and urged him to have his boss hand the slate of electors over to Vice President Mike Pence in person. The deputy refused.

Ms Thomas’s activities in Wisconsin were reported following previous revelations about her efforts to contact dozens of lawmakers in Arizona with a similar request there. The Post’s report Thursday reveals just how wide-ranging Ms Thomas’s effort may have truly been, and raises even more questions about whether her husband can continue to weigh in and rule on cases related to the January 6 assault on Congress and Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

Clarence Thomas, her husband, faces intense scrutiny as a result of his wife’s activities. As a member of the nation’s highest court, he is in a position of incredible power and last year chose to use that power and file the lone dissenting vote in a case to determine whether Mr Trump could shield some White House documents from the House select committee investigating January 6.

Some Democrats have called for his resignation over that vote with the knowledge that he took it knowing his wife was involved in efforts to overturn the election on Mr Trump’s behalf, while more have demanded that he recuse himself from such cases going forward. Justice Thomas has not responded to the criticism, and neither has the Supreme Court as a whole.

Ginni Thomas’s embrace of the conspiracy theories surrounding Mr Trump’s election defeat are both unsurprising given her own long history of conservative activism and concerning as it shows just how far the false belief has traveled in the upper echelons of DC’s conservative political spheres.

The efforts by Mr Trump’s team to overturn the election results in Georgia led to a criminal investigation in that state which is ongoing — Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s lead attorney, is known to be a target as likely is John Eastman, another attorney for the ex-president who was heavily involved in the effort to press Mike Pence to interfere on January 6.

The Justice Department is also leading a grand jury investigation of January 6 in Washington DC which recently saw testimony from Marc Short, chief of staff to the former vice president.