Ginni Thomas To Testify Before Jan. 6 Committee 'Sometime This Week'

The committee's chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson, confirmed her upcoming appearance.
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Ginni Thomas, the wife of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is due to testify before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in the coming days.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chair of the Jan. 6 panel, did not offer a specific date for the interview, but said it is due to take place “sometime this week.”

“Again, to my knowledge, it’s set, and we look forward to whenever that occurs,” Thompson said on Wednesday, according to The Hill.

Mark Paoletta, Thomas’ lawyer, had confirmed his client agreed to testify in a statement to CNN last week.

“As she has said from the outset, Mrs. Thomas is eager to answer the Committee’s questions to clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election. She looks forward to that opportunity,” the statement said.

Earlier this summer, Paoletta wrote to the committee saying he saw no reason Thomas should come forward, after she had signaled she was open to testifying.

“Based on my understanding of the facts … I do not believe there is currently a sufficient basis to speak with Mrs. Thomas,” Paoletta wrote in a letter, obtained by Politico.

But the committee has access to numerous pieces of evidence of Thomas’ involvement in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Earlier this year, the panel obtained text messages Thomas sent to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows from November 2020 to January 2021 calling on him and President Donald Trump to not give up challenging the election results.

“Do not concede,” Thomas wrote Meadows on Nov. 6, 2020. “It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”

Denver Riggleman, the former congressman who also acted as a senior technical adviser to the Jan. 6 committee, told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in a segment that aired Sunday that when they first unearthed the texts he contemplated whether her husband was potentially involved in her efforts.

“What really shook me was the fact that if Clarence agreed with or was even aware of his wife’s efforts, all three branches of government would be tied to the stop the steal movement,” Riggleman said.

Apart from reaching out to Meadows, Thomas also sought to pressure state lawmakers in key battleground states to assist in overturning the election.

Thomas wrote to two Arizona lawmakers — a state Biden won narrowly in 2020 — and insisted they pick “a clean slate of Electors.”

She also emailed at least two lawmakers in Wisconsin, urging them to overturn the election and alleging widespread election fraud. Those allegations have been debunked.

The Jan. 6 panel has also obtained correspondence Thomas exchanged with John Eastman, an attorney who helped Trump devise the fake electors scheme, following the 2020 election to strategize over undoing Biden’s win.

The committee postponed a hearing scheduled for this week due to Hurricane Ian making landfall in Florida.

While the agenda for the upcoming hearing remains unknown, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a Jan. 6 panel member, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that “it will tell the story about a key element of Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the election.”

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