Thomas, a Conservative activist and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, seems open to talking to the committee, and told Conservative channel The Daily Caller that “he can’t wait to clear up misconceptions.”
“I’m looking forward to talking to them,” he said in an interview posted Thursday.
The panel’s request follows Wednesday afternoon’s revelations that the committee has email correspondence between Thomas and Conservative attorney John Eastman, according to a source familiar with the committee.
The source who spoke to CNN did not provide details about the contents of the emails or say if they were direct messages between the two or part of a larger group correspondence. An independent source said the emails were part of a stretch of messages provided to the committee after a federal judge ruled that Eastman’s correspondence was relevant to the work of the committee investigating former President Donald Trump and efforts to cancel the 2020 presidential election in the months leading up to January 6, 2021.
Thomas has been criticized for his political activism and involvement in efforts to push for allegations of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election. January 6, but left early. Some progressives and some legal ethics experts see her activism as a conflict of interest for her husband, who is on the highest court in the country.
The text messages previously revealed between Thomas and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, obtained by the committee, showed that Thomas regularly consulted with Meadows to encourage him to push for election fraud allegations and work for prevent elections from being certified.
Thomas has repeatedly said that her political activism has nothing to do with her husband’s work in the Supreme Court. Judge Thomas has been involved in Supreme Court cases related to the 2020 election controversies and has refused to challenge the related cases. Eastman on Thursday “categorically denied” having had conversations with Thomas and her husband about “any pending case or that could happen in court.” “We have never participated in these discussions, we would not participate in these discussions and we did not do so in December 2020 or at any other time,” he wrote in part in a post on his Substack. He suggested that a newly reported e-mail he sent in December 2020, in which he claimed he understood there was “a heated fight going on” in the Supreme Court, had been motivated by a media report called the Vision Times.
Thompson on Thursday rejected complaints from the Justice Department that the House committee was releasing all of his transcripts to help with the department’s investigation, saying he would deliver the transcripts to the department “in due course.”
“We will not stop what we are doing to share the information we have gotten so far with the Department of Justice. We have to do our job,” he said.
Asked if the panel would do it over the weekend, the congressman replied “no,” but added, “That doesn’t mean we’re not collaborating.”
CNN’s Manu Raju, Lauren Koenig, Morgan Rimmer and Annie Grayer contributed to this report.