First on CNN: January 6 committee has text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows

By Ryan Nobles, Annie Grayer, Zachary Cohen and Jamie Gangel, CNN

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 riot has in its possession more than two dozen text messages, 29 in total, between former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, according to multiple sources familiar with the messages.

These text messages, according to sources, took place between early November 2020 and mid-January 2021. Thomas recently revealed that she attended the pro-Trump rally that preceded the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, but says she “played no role” in planning the events of that day.

The text messages, reviewed by CNN, show Thomas pleading with Meadows to continue the fight to overturn the election results.

“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,” Thomas wrote on November 10, 2020.

CNN first reported that the text messages were in the committee’s possession. The Washington Post first described their content.

Thomas regularly checked in with Meadows to encourage him to push claims of voter fraud and work to prevent the election from being certified. Meadows often responded. On that same day as the previous text, he wrote: “I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.”

On November 24, 2020, Meadows promised he wasn’t done battling on then-President Donald Trump’s behalf and evoked his faith as a source of strength.

“This is a fight of good versus evil. 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.”

Thomas wrote to Meadows on November 19, 2020, “Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.” Attorney Sidney Powell, who worked on Trump-aligned lawsuits seeking to challenge the results of the 2020 election, was also referred to by herself as “The Kraken” in reference to the ancient mythological sea creature.

By the end of November, Thomas was getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress of the attempt to find a path to overturn the results.

On November 24, 2020 she wrote: “I can’t see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud. Just going with one more thing with no frickin consequences… the whole coup and now this… we just cave to people wanting Biden to be anointed? Many of us can’t continue the GOP charade.”

The committee is in possession of only one text from the month of January 2021, four days after the riot on Capitol Hill.

Thomas wrote to Meadows that she was angry with then-Vice President Mike Pence for not taking the steps necessary to block the certification of the election results.

“We are living through what feels like the end of America. Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in a listening mode to see where to fight with our teams. Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!! Amazing times. The end of Liberty,” Thomas wrote.

Clarence Thomas and Ginni Thomas declined to answer questions from CNN on Friday.

“No, thank you,” said Clarence Thomas, dressed in a blue button-down shirt and standing inside his garage, when CNN asked to speak with him. Ginni Thomas walked away without commenting.

Ginni Thomas’ messages reflected a belief that the legal challenges presented by a group of conservative lawyers helping the campaign were valid. She attempted to convince Meadows to put his faith in the hands of Powell, who had spent the weeks following the election claiming to have mountains of evidence of fraud that never materialized.

The content of the text messages may be of interest to the committee’s investigation, because it asked Meadows in a subpoena to turn over “both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the committee’s activity.”

The revelation of text messages between Thomas and Meadows, both key allies of Trump, comes as progressives and some legal ethics experts see her activism as a potential conflict of interest for Thomas’ work on some Supreme Court cases.

Meadows turned over thousands of text messages before he stopped cooperating with the committee. The texts have proven to hold a treasure trove of information about what was going on in the White House in the days leading up to the insurrection, and what people in Trump’s orbit were thinking.

The text messages in the committee’s possession are only part of the tranche of documents that Meadows provided to the committee during the short period of time he was cooperating with their investigation. They do not necessarily represent the sum total of communication between Thomas and Meadows during that period of time.

There is also the possibility some messages were not turned over due to privilege claims.

Meadows and Thomas are longtime friends, both of whom have been active in conservative causes for decades.

While Thomas has been actively involved in politics, she says she has been careful to distance her activity from her husband.

“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,” she recently told the Free Beacon.

The work of the January 6 select committee has already come before the Supreme Court. In January, the court did not stand in the way of the release of thousands of documents from the Trump White House despite the former President suing to keep them secret under executive privilege. The vote on the matter was 8-1, with only Thomas dissenting.

CNN reached out to Meadows’ attorney for comment. A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment.

This story has been updated with additional developments and reaction.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.