Trump called Ginni Thomas 'a fine woman' who 'loves our country' but says he was unaware of her push to challenge the 2020 election
- Trump called Ginni Thomas "a fine woman" who "loves our country."
- Trump told The Washington Post he wasn't aware of her efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Former President Donald Trump called Virginia "Ginni" Thomas "a fine woman" who "loves our country," and told The Washington Post that he had no knowledge of her role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Ginni Thomas, a longtime conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has come under scrutiny because of nearly 30 known text messages she exchanged with Trump's then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, about overturning the 2020 election. Their correspondence came to light after being obtained by the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot. The committee plans to request an interview from Ginni Thomas as part of its probe.
"First of all, her husband is a great justice. And she's a fine woman. And she loves our country," Trump told The Post.
Trump also declined to tell The Post whether he believed Meadows should have handed over his text messages and other communication records to the panel, which Trump has attacked as a partisan sham and witch hunt.
In the messages, Ginni Thomas urged Meadows not to concede Trump's election loss, trashed Republicans in Congress for not trying hard enough to overturn the election, and rallied behind the controversial lawyer Sidney Powell, who elevated conspiracy theories about the election.
At various points, she also pushed the conspiracy theories that Trump had watermarked mail-in ballots to trace evidence of voter fraud and that members of the "Biden crime family" had been arrested for mass voter fraud and were being held in barges off the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while awaiting trial.
In the years leading up to the 2020 election, Ginni Thomas also paid occasional visits to the White House, the Daily Beast reported. She played to Trump's paranoia about the "Deep State" by supplying him with names of supposedly disloyal people he should fire, and other often-questionable lists of people she thought the White House should hire.
Trump, the Beast reported, would emerge from his meetings with Thomas whipped into a frenzy and demanding that allegedly traitorous employees should be fired.
"Trump loved talking to Ginni so much because he loved hearing about who was a never Trumper, or allegedly one. He loved people who would flatter him" as Ginni did, Trump's former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told the Beast.
"But also, his obsession with loyalty aside, he just loved to gossip — all the time. That's something else he got out of his series of meetings at the White House with Ginni Thomas," Grisham added.
The revelations about Ginni Thomas' text messages have raised thorny ethical questions about whether her husband Justice Thomas should recuse himself from hearing future cases related to January 6 records, and have driven some Democratic lawmakers to call for his resignation.
Ginni Thomas also recently acknowledged in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon that she attended the "Save America" rally at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, but left before Trump took the stage because she got cold. She denied having any ties to organizers of the rally, despite news reports suggesting so.
On concerns about potential conflicts of interest for Justice Thomas because of her conservative advocacy work, Ginni Thomas said what she does has no impact on her husband.
"Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America," Thomas told the Washington Free Beacon. "But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn't discuss his work with me, and I don't involve him in my work."