The House Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol has new emails showing that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, corresponded with Trump’s allied lawyer, John Eastman , two sources said Wednesday.
The committee is considering what to do with the emails, two people familiar with the documents told CBS News.
The news was first reported by The Washington Post.
The House committee on Jan. 6 at Thursday’s hearing is expected to explore Eastman’s role in pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally reject voters and replace them with others. The theory put forward by Eastman and others was that seven-state Republicans will present a list of alternate voters on January 6, 2021, when Congress meets to certify the votes of the Electoral College.
Last week, a federal judge ordered Eastman to hand over 159 documents to the select committee of the House he had tried to retain, claiming the privilege of the executive.
Virginia Thomas, Conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 23, 2017. Susan Walsh / AP
At the public hearing of the House select committee last week, Vice President Liz Cheney said the committee would present some of these emails. “You’ll see the email exchanges between Eastman and the vice president’s attorney while the violent attack was taking place in Congress,” Cheney said. “[Pence counsel Greg] Jacob told this to Mr. Eastman: “Thanks for your madness **, we’re under siege.”
House Select Committee Chair Bennie Thompson said in May that the committee had not considered citing her as a witness. “Well, it wasn’t really a focal point of the broader committee’s work,” Thompson told CBS News on May 19. “She is only the wife of a Supreme Court judge.”
Texts between Ginni Thomas and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows showed that she had pushed him to overthrow the election results. He has previously said he attended Trump’s rally on the Ellipse, but said he left early.
According to text messages first reported by The Washington Post and CBS News, Ginni Thomas’s text messages showed her encouraging Trump’s top aide to fight to cancel the 2020 election. gathering evidence of an alleged fraud, Thomas wrote to Meadows on November 19, saying, “Make a plan … and save us from the left to overthrow America.”
Ellis Kim and Melissa Quinn contributed to this report.
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Robert Costa is the main election and campaign correspondent for CBS News based in Washington, DC