Texts show Ginni Thomas urged Mark Meadows to help overturn 2020 election

Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas.
(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, conservative activist Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent several text messages to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, urging him to take measures to overturn the results and not let Donald Trump concede, The Washington Post reports.

The Post and CBS News obtained copies of 29 messages sent between Thomas and Meadows. On Nov. 10, after news outlets projected President Biden was the winner of the election, Thomas wrote to Meadows: "Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! ... You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America's constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History."

On Nov. 24, Meadows wrote to Thomas: "This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it." Thomas replied, "Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now. ... I will try to keep holding on."

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Thomas told Meadows she wanted lawyer Sidney Powell, who promoted false conspiracies about widespread election fraud, to be "the lead and the face" of Trump's legal team, and urged Meadows to stand up against congressional Republicans and White House staffers who said the election wasn't stolen. Thomas never directly referenced her husband or the Supreme Court in her messages.

These texts were among the 2,320 messages Meadows turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Meadows' attorney, George Terwilliger III, confirmed that the text messages were real, but without commenting on individual texts, he said "nothing about the text messages presents any legal issues." Neither Ginni or Clarence Thomas responded to requests for comment.

Meadows stopped cooperating with the Jan. 6 committee after he provided the 2,320 messages, and it's not known if he exchanged any other texts with Thomas, the Post says. Earlier this month, Thomas for the first time publicly acknowledged attending the "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6, 2021, right before the Capitol attack, but denied reports that she helped organize the event. Thomas also told the Washington Free Beacon there is no conflict of interest between her activism and her husband's work on the Supreme Court.

Read more of the text messages exchanged between Thomas and Meadows at The Washington Post.

Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.