Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, said in an interview published Monday that she attended the January 6, 2021 rally at the Ellipse in Washington. The interview appeared in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, and followed a DailyExpertNews Magazine article last month examining the political and personal histories of both Ms. Thomas and her husband, including her role in trying to win the presidential election. to undo.
Ms Thomas did not answer detailed questions from The Times about her findings. Her comments to The Free Beacon were her first comments about her participation in the rally. She said she attended the meeting in the morning but left before President Donald J. Trump addressed the crowd.
“I was disappointed and frustrated that violence took place after a peaceful rally of Trump supporters at the Ellipse on Jan. 6,” she said. “There are important and legitimate substantive questions about achieving goals such as electoral integrity, racial equality and political accountability that a democratic system like ours needs to be able to rationally debate and debate in the political square. I fear we are losing that ability.”
Ms. Thomas has previously opposed an ongoing Congressional investigation into what happened that day. In December, she co-signed a letter calling on House Republicans to remove Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois from their conference because they were members of the congressional committee investigating the attacks. Ms Thomas and her co-authors said the study “caused a lack of respect for the rule of law in our country” and “legal harassment of citizens who have done nothing wrong”, adding that they would start “a nationwide movement to vote of the citizens to this effort.”
Ms. Thomas sits on the nine-member board of directors of CNP Action, a conservative group that helped promote the “Stop the Steal” movement that sought to keep Mr Trump in office. The group instructed members to pressure Republican lawmakers to challenge the election results and appoint alternative voter lists. The Times also reported that in December 2020 it distributed a newsletter that included a report targeting five swing states where Trump and his allies were filing lawsuits, warning that time is running out for the courts to “annul the election.”
Ms. Thomas downplayed her role in the group in her final comments.
“As a member of their 501(c)(4) board, I have to admit that I don’t attend many of those individual meetings, nor many of their phone calls they have,” she said. “At CNP I moderated a session here and there. I also made some comments there.”
Dustin Stockton, one of the organizers involved in the January 6 rally, told The Times that Ms. Thomas had played a peace-building role between feuding factions of rally organizers “so that there would be no division.” Ms. Thomas disputed that, saying there were “stories where it was said that I mediated that day to arguing factions of leaders. I do not have.”
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She also said she “had no part with those planning and directing the January 6 events.”
The work of the committee investigating the January 6 attack continues. Last week, it presented its theory for potential criminal charges against Mr. Trump, arguing before a federal judge that he and conservative attorney John C. Eastman, a friend of the Thomases and a former Attorney General for Justice Thomas, were involved in a conspiracy to defraud the American public as part of a plan to undo the 2020 election.