The Washington Post still has its exclusive “Ginni Thomas corresponded with John Eastman, people close to Jan. 6 probe say” behind a paywall this morning, but here is Bob Costa of CBS News with the substance of the report, Ginni Thomas corresponded with John Eastman, sources say newly discovered emails show:
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has new emails that show that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, corresponded with Trump-allied lawyer John Eastman – the “Coup Memos” lawyer – two sources said Wednesday.
Note: John Eastman is the former law clerk of Justice Claremce Thomas.
The news was first reported by The Washington Post.
The House Jan. 6 committee is expected in Thursday’s hearing to explore Eastman’s role to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally reject electors and replace them with alternate ones. The theory floated by Eastman and others was that Republicans in seven states would submit alternate slates of electors on Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress met to certify the Electoral College votes.
A message from Vice Chair @RepLizCheney about Thursday’s hearing. pic.twitter.com/SsnOOEnyVq
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 14, 2022
Hearing ➡️ tomorrow at 1:00pm
Witnesses:
• Mr. Greg Jacob, Former Counsel to Vice President Mike Pence
• The Honorable J. Michael Luttig, Retired judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and informal advisor to Mike Pence— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 15, 2022
That is 1:00 p.m. ET – 10:00 a.m. Arizona time.
Last week, a federal judge ordered Eastman to turn over 159 documents to the House select committee that he had attempted to withhold, claiming executive privilege.
In the House select committee’s public hearing last week, vice chair Liz Cheney said the committee would be presenting some of those emails. “You will see the email exchanges between Eastman and the vice president’s counsel as the violent attack on Congress was underway,” Cheney said. “[Pence counsel Greg] Jacob said this to Mr. Eastman: ‘Thanks to your bullsh**, we are under siege.'”
The committee is mulling what to do about the Ginni Thomas emails, two people familiar with the documents told CBS News.
House select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson said in May that the committee had not considered subpoenaing her as a witness. “Well, she was not really a focal point of the broader committee’s work,” Thompson told CBS News on May 19. “She just happens to be the wife of a Supreme Court justice.”
Texts between Ginni Thomas and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows showed that she had pushed him to overthrow the election results. She has previously said she attended Trump’s rally at the Ellipse, but she said she left early.
According to the text messages first reported by The Washington Post and CBS News, Ginni Thomas’ text messages showed her encouraging Trump’s top aide to fight to overturn the 2020 election. Citing Trump allies who were gathering evidence of alleged fraud, Thomas wrote Meadows on November 19, saying, “Make a plan…and save us from the left taking America down.”
The Daily Beast adds, Jan. 6 House Probe Eyes Ginni Thomas as Emails With Eastman Surface: WaPo:
The committee is now weighing whether to explore Ginni Thomas’ role in trying to overturn the election—which the emails reportedly prove was larger than previously known, according to two people familiar with the matter. It was previously reported that the committee had not been interested in bringing Thomas into their investigation, though she is known to have corresponded with ex-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and 29 Arizona lawmakers in separate instances about reversing Joe Biden’s victory.
Eastman, a former law professor who once clerked for Clarence Thomas, was tapped by Donald Trump in September 2020 to be the architect of the then-president’s attempt to stay in power. The Post’s sources declined to provide details on the content of the emails between him and Thomas.
We have the right-wing activist wife of a Supreme Court Justice up to her eyeballs in coup plotting with the “Coup Memos” lawyer, the former law clerk to her husband Justice Clarence Thomas. John Eastman wrote an instruction manual for a coup d’état, and was among the Coup Plotters at the Willard Hotel – the “coup command center” – directing the insurrection on January 6.
Thee are three things which must happen now:
- Ginni Thomas needs to be subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee.
- The Department of Justice must indict all the Coup Plotters, including the former guy, for seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official act of Congress, and conspiracy to defraud the United States of America.
- Justice Clarence Thomas must resign from the Supreme Court effective at the end of the current term in June. There is no conceivable way he did not know about the activities of his wife, and in a case before the Court earlier this year involving John Eastman’s emails, he was the only Justice who voted against disclosure, no doubt trying to cover up the discovery of his wife’s emails with Mark Meadows and John Eastman.
This raises serious questions about what Justice Clarence Thomas knew, and when did he know it. If he was aware of his wife’s coup plotting actvities as a member of the Coup Plotters team – maybe even aware of his former law clerk John Eastman’s activities as a member of the Coup Plotters team- in advance of January 6, he kept it to himself. He did not alert law enforcement. He even tried to cover up his wife’s role in the Coup Plot.
Even more disturbing, perhaps Justice Thomas even gave his wife and/or John Eastman some words of advice for their coup plot. Or words of encouragement. Did he openly support the coup d’état? This opens up a whole new line of inquiry for the January 6 Committee.
In any case, Clarence Thomas cannot be allowed to remain on the Court. Recusal is not good enough, he must resign by the end of June. And he needs to be investigated because of his close relationship with his Coup Plotter wife and his former law clerk, “Coup Memos” lawyer John Eastman.
Clarence and Ginni Thomas have long been one of Washington’s “power couples” for years. What they are is the most corrupt Supreme Court Justice in American history, and the most corrupt wife of a Supreme Court Justice in American history.
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In a related report, “Trump Lawyer Cited ‘Heated Fight’ Among Justices Over Election Suits”, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/us/trump-emails-eastman-chesebro-jan-6.html
“Coup Memos” lawyer John Eastman … claimed in an email after Election Day 2020 to have insight into a “heated fight” among the Supreme Court justices over whether to hear arguments about the president’s efforts to overturn his defeat at the polls, two people briefed on the email said.
NOTE: Will Chief Justice John Roberts now open a leak investigation into the deliberations of the Court? Did Ginni Thomas tell Eastman this? Or did it come directly from Clarence Thomas?
Eastman made the statement in a Dec. 24, 2020, exchange with a pro-Trump lawyer and Trump campaign officials over whether to file legal papers that they hoped might prompt four justices to agree to hear an election case from Wisconsin.
“So the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines, and I understand that there is a heated fight underway,” Mr. Eastman wrote, according to the people briefed on the contents of the email. Referring to the process by which at least four justices are needed to take up a case, he added, “For those willing to do their duty, we should help them by giving them a Wisconsin cert petition to add into the mix.”
The pro-Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, replied that the “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”
Their exchange took place five days after Mr. Trump issued a call for his supporters to attend a “protest” at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress would certify the electoral vote count confirming Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. “Be there. Will be wild!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.
The previously unreported exchange is part of a group of emails obtained by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol by a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters.
Mr. Chesebro’s comment about the justices being more open to hearing a case if they fear chaos was striking for its link to the potential for the kind of mob scene that materialized at the Capitol weeks later.
And Mr. Eastman’s email, if taken at face value, raised the question of how he would have known about internal tension among the justices about dealing with election cases. Mr. Eastman had been a clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas.
UPDATE: Axios reports. “Jan. 6 panel to seek testimony from Ginni Thomas”, https://www.axios.com/2022/06/16/ginni-thomas-jan-6-panel
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack plans to seek testimony from conservative activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the panel’s chair said Thursday.
Ginni Thomas told the far-right Daily Caller she would agree to an interview. “I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them,” she said.
“We think it’s time that we, at some point, invite her to come talk to the committee,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told Axios.
Thompson said of the committee’s reasoning, “We have discovered in those Eastman [emails] some information that refers to Ginni Thomas,” but declined to go into further detail about what she’ll be asked.
Asked when the invite will go out, Thompson said, “Soon.”
-just issue a damn subpoena.