Ginni Thomas Denies Discussing Election Subversion Efforts With Her Husband

WASHINGTON — Virginia Thomas, the spouse of Justice Clarence Thomas and a conservative activist who pushed to overturn the 2020 election, informed the Home committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol that she by no means mentioned these efforts along with her husband, throughout a closed-door interview through which she continued to perpetuate the false declare that the election was stolen.

Leaving the interview, which passed off at an workplace constructing close to the Capitol and lasted about 4 hours, Ms. Thomas smiled in response to reporters’ questions, however declined to reply any publicly.

She did, nonetheless, reply questions behind closed doorways, mentioned Consultant Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, who added that her testimony could possibly be included in an upcoming listening to.

“If there’s one thing of advantage, will probably be,” he mentioned.

Throughout her interview, Ms. Thomas, who goes by Ginni, repeated her assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Thompson mentioned, a perception she insisted upon in late 2020 as she pressured state legislators and the White Home chief of workers to do extra to attempt to invalidate the outcomes.

In a press release she learn firstly of her testimony, Ms. Thomas denied having mentioned her post-election actions along with her husband, in response to the conservative media outlet The Federalist, which revealed her ready feedback.

The interview ended months of negotiations between the committee and Ms. Thomas over her testimony. The committee’s investigators had grown significantly inquisitive about her communications with John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who was in shut contact with Mr. Trump and wrote a memo that Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have likened to a blueprint for a coup.

“At this level, we’re glad she got here,” Mr. Thompson mentioned.

After Ms. Thomas’s look on Thursday, her lawyer Mark Paoletta mentioned she had been “glad to cooperate with the committee to clear up the misconceptions about her actions surrounding the 2020 elections.”

“She answered all of the committee’s questions,” Mr. Paoletta mentioned in a press release. “As she has mentioned from the outset, Mrs. Thomas had vital issues about fraud and irregularities within the 2020 election. And, as she informed the committee, her minimal and mainstream exercise centered on making certain that reviews of fraud and irregularities have been investigated. Past that, she performed no function in any occasions after the 2020 election outcomes. As she wrote in a textual content to Mark Meadows on the time, she additionally condemned the violence on Jan. 6, as she abhors violence on any aspect of the aisle.”

A spokesman for the committee declined to remark.

Ms. Thomas exchanged textual content messages with Mr. Meadows, the White Home chief of workers, through which she urged him to problem Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory within the 2020 election, which she known as a “heist,” and indicated that she had reached out to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, about Mr. Trump’s efforts to make use of the courts to maintain himself in energy. She even advised the lawyer who must be put accountable for that effort.

Ms. Thomas additionally pressed lawmakers in a number of states to struggle the outcomes of the election.

Nevertheless it was Ms. Thomas’s interactions with Mr. Eastman, a conservative lawyer who pushed Vice President Mike Pence to dam or delay the certification of Electoral School votes on Jan. 6, 2021, which have most investigators.

“She’s a witness,” Mr. Thompson mentioned Thursday. “We didn’t accuse her of something.”

The panel obtained no less than one electronic mail between Ms. Thomas and Mr. Eastman after a federal choose ordered Mr. Eastman to show over paperwork to the panel from the interval after the November 2020 election when he was assembly with conservative teams to debate preventing the election outcomes.

That very same choose has mentioned it’s “extra doubtless than not” that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman dedicated two felonies as a part of the trouble, together with conspiracy to defraud the American folks.

Mr. Paoletta has argued that the communications between Ms. Thomas and Mr. Eastman include little of worth to the panel’s investigation.

Ms. Thomas’s cooperation comes because the Jan. 6 committee is coming into its closing months of labor after a summer season of high-profile hearings and getting ready an in depth report, which is anticipated to incorporate suggestions for tips on how to confront the threats to democracy highlighted by the riot and Mr. Trump’s drive to overturn the election.

The interview got here simply days after the panel abruptly postponed a listening to scheduled for Wednesday, citing the hurricane bearing down on Florida. The listening to has but to be rescheduled.

Consultant Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, mentioned Ms. Thomas’s interview confirmed that “folks proceed to cooperate with the committee and perceive the significance of our investigation.”

The panel has interviewed greater than 1,000 witnesses and has obtained a whole lot of hundreds of paperwork and greater than 10,000 submissions to its tip line since June.

“There’s much more info coming in on a regular basis,” Mr. Raskin mentioned.

He mentioned the committee members have seen hundreds of hours’ price of video photos and tape however need to be “disciplined” about how they current them within the subsequent listening to.

“There are specific people who find themselves going to denounce no matter we do, it doesn’t matter what,” he mentioned. “We simply need to have the ability to full the narrative after which ship our suggestions about what must be performed in an effort to insulate American democracy in opposition to coups, rebel, political violence and electoral sabotage sooner or later.”

Maggie Haberman and Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.