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Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has for the first time, in an interview with The Washington Free Beacon acknowledged that she attended the January 6 ‘Stop The Steal’ rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol, but she left before things turned violent. She was too cold to stay for Trump’s speech, she explained.
Thomas said she was part of the crowd that gathered on the Ellipse that morning to support President Donald Trump. Trump was claiming falsely that widespread voter fraud had delivered the presidency to Democrat Joe Biden — a falsehood he continues to repeat.
Thomas has been a prolific conservative activist for decades, which has raised potential conflicts of interest questions for her husband, one of the most powerful men in government.
In February 2021, Thomas apologized to her husband’s former law clerks after a rift developed among them over her election advocacy of Trump and endorsement of the Jan. 6 rally.
“I owe you all an apology. I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions,” Thomas wrote to a private Thomas Clerk World email list of her husband’s staff over his three decades on the bench.
In December, Thomas was among a group of conservative leaders who signed a letter criticizing the work of the bipartisan House committee as “overtly partisan political persecution.” The next month, the Supreme Court decided on Trump’s request to deny the committee White House records that Biden had ordered be released. Instead of recusing himself from the case, Clarence Thomas was the only justice to say he would grant Trump’s request.
In the interview, Thomas insisted that her work is separate from her husband’s.
“Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America,” Thomas said. “But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work.”
Thomas added that she was “disappointed and frustrated that there was violence that happened following a peaceful gathering of Trump supporters on the Ellipse on Jan. 6,” but said “important and legitimate substantive questions about achieving goals like electoral integrity, racial equality, and political accountability” remain.
Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonpartisan advocacy group that advocates for reforms to the Supreme Court, said Ginni Thomas’s participation in the rally should have been enough of an excuse for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the House committee case.
“Because of her participation in that rally, which then led to the breach of the Capitol, which then led to the January 6 committee … that means that you, as a justice, your impartiality still might reasonably be questioned,” Roth said.
