About
Virginia (Ginni) Thomas is a conservative lobbyist and activist who has been married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas since 1987. Numerous conflict of interest charges have arisen as a result of their long crusade together fighting for “a more conservative America.” Her close connections to Trump’s inner circle and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election have put her in the spotlight in recent years. After initial resistance, in September 2022 she finally sat for a five-hour, closed-door session with members of the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.
Raised in Nebraska, Thomas earned a law degree in 1983 from Creighton University in Omaha, where she grew up, and in the late 1980s, she argued against congressional adoption of the Family and Medical Leave Act when she was working as a labor relations specialist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In the 1990s, Thomas worked for conservative congressmen such as former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R–TX) and Representative Hal Daub (R–NB).
In 2000, when Thomas worked for the conservative Heritage Foundation—the think tank behind Project 2025—she was already collecting resumes for potential appointments in the Bush administration well before the Supreme Court had even ruled on the Bush v Gore case in that contested presidential election.
In 2010 Thomas established Liberty Central, a political action group tied to the Tea Party movement that quickly received $500,000 in dark money. Within a couple of years, she had shifted to lobbying through her new firm, Liberty Consulting.
In addition, Thomas is a director of CNP Action, the political action arm of the far-right Council for National Policy (CNP), and served on the board of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA (TPUSA), which sent buses full of protesters to Washington for the rally and march on January 6, 2021.
Thomas is close to Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo, an arch-conservative Catholic who has helped get justices Alito, Roberts, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court. She is also connected to James O’Keefe, the controversial founder of Project Veritas, which films progressives surreptitiously to produce “gotcha” videos. The two are associated with the organization Crowdsources, which also partners with Cleta Mitchell of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) to restrict voting rights.
January 6, 2021
- In the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol, Thomas sent more than two dozen text messages to Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows repeatedly pressing him to find ways to overturn the 2020 election results.
- On January 6, she posted her support for the insurrectionists on Facebook.
- After the insurrection, Thomas apologized for her role in sowing division to members of a listserv of former Justice Thomas’ law clerks (which includes John Eastman, the lawyer who has since been indicted several times for drafting a memo suggesting various ways Trump could overturn the election results).
- After initially refusing to cooperate with the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, Thomas reversed course in September 2022 and responded to questions from the committee during a five-hour private session in which she insisted that the 2020 election had been stolen.
The Big Lie
- A revealing series of text messages between Thomas and Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows makes clear that she was integrally involved in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and prevent Biden from taking office.
- On November 9, 2020, Thomas emailed 29 state legislators in Arizona urging them to overrule Biden’s win of that state and instead “ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.” It was one of several attempts she made to push the fake electors scheme that ultimately failed.
- That same day, Thomas also sent emails to at least two lawmakers in Wisconsin urging them to uphold their “Constitutional duty” by making sure that “a clean slate of electors” was chosen for that state, despite the fact that the AP and other news outlets had already called the race for Biden five days earlier.
- On December 13—the day before representatives were set to meet at statehouses across the country to vote to certify their slates of presidential electors—Thomas sent another batch of letters to 22 members of Arizona’s House and one of its state senators claiming that the 2020 election had been subjected to unprecedented fraud and they should therefore overrule the will of voters by selecting a “clean slate” of electors. “Before you choose your state’s Electors …consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” the email said. It linked to a video of a man urging swing-state lawmakers to “put things right” and “not give in to cowardice.”
- Thomas is associated with Kimberly Fletcher, who runs Moms for America and claimed at two demonstrations in Washington on January 5, 2021 that the election had been stolen.
- Through Groundswell, an organization featuring a Who’s Who of right-wing leaders, Thomas is also associated with Ali Alexander, who fomented the Stop the Steal movement and is also associated with the CNP.
- In December 2021, Thomas co-signed a letter calling on House Republicans to expel Representatives Liz Cheney (R–WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R–IL) from their conference for serving on the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, claiming that their participation brought “disrespect to our country’s rule of law” and “legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong.” In February 2022, the GOP voted to censure rather than oust the two representatives for their perceived “disloyalty” to Trump.