Ginni Thomas Told Jan. 6 Committee She Regrets the 'Tone and Content' of 2020 Election Text Messages

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Ginni Thomas

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riots that she was hopeful that "state legislators could identify fraud" in the 2020 presidential election, thereby allowing the election to be overturned in favor of Donald Trump.

That's why, she said, she sent text messages to those close to Trump, urging them not to concede the election and to fully embrace the former president's claims of fraud, despite any evidence. Now, however, she regrets "all of those texts," she told the committee.

The committee earlier obtained 29 texts between Thomas, 65, and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. In the messages, which were reported by the Post and CBS News, Thomas beseeched Meadows, 62, to do what he could to keep Trump in power, despite Biden's win.

Three days after the election, for instance, Thomas wrote Meadows: "Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back."

Of her text messages with Meadows, Thomas said she now regrets "the tone and content," saying, "it was an emotional time, and I was texting with a friend who I had known a long time. So I really find my language imprudent and my choices of sending the context of these emails unfortunate."

Thomas was also found to have written emails to at least 29 lawmakers in Arizona, pressing them "to set aside Joe Biden's popular vote victory and 'choose' presidential electors."

Emails obtained by the committee also showed that Thomas was in contact with conservative attorney John Eastman, a central figure in the investigation who had written a detailed plan to attempt to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the 2020 election results on Jan. 6.

RELATED: Supreme Court Justice's Wife Apologizes After Endorsing Trump Rally Where He Encouraged March on Capitol

In a voluntary interview with the committee, Thomas said, "there's a lot of people uncomfortable with the 2020 election despite what this committee is pushing" — a remark that echoes the claims of the former president and his allies.

Trump has claimed for more than two years that the election was fraudulent and somehow "stolen" from him. Those claims have been investigated by even Trump's own attorney general, who has since called them "bulls---." Legal challenges to the election have failed in states across the country.

But Thomas told the committee she "wouldn't have believed" that people like Barr "were able to identify and track down" the same sort of irregularities that she claimed to be "hearing from the grass roots in certain states."

Asked for specifics about the fraud that concerned her, Thomas said: "I can't say that I was familiar at the time with any specific evidence. I was just hearing it from news reports and friends on the ground, grassroots activists who were inside of various polling places that found things suspicious."

RELATED: Justice Clarence Thomas' Wife Ginni Urged Mark Meadows to Overturn 2020 Election, Texts Reveal

Thomas previously acknowledged that she attended the rally that preceded the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, though she told The Washington Free Beacon that she left before then-President Trump addressed the crowd. She has said she "played no role with those who were planning and leading the Jan. 6 events."

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Thomas' communications with Trump allies have raised questions about whether it poses a conflict of interest for her husband, and if he should recuse himself from Supreme Court cases related to the 2020 presidential election.

Speaking to the committee, Thomas said she had not discussed legal challenges to the election with her husband, saying she "was not involved in those challenges in any way."