Ginni Thomas, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife and a well-connected right-wing activist in her own right, lobbied two Republican lawmakers in Arizona to overturn the 2020 election results, emails reported by The Washington Post show.
In Nov. 9 emails to the two lawmakers, Ginni Thomas urged them to choose “a clean slate of Electors” in lieu of the electors that were actually chosen by Arizona’s 2020 voters — the slate for Joe Biden.
The legislators — Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and state Rep. Shawnna Bolick — had “the power to fight back against fraud,” Thomas wrote. The ability to choose elector slates, she wrote, was “yours and yours alone.”
The emails also requested a meeting with the legislators “so I can learn more about what you are doing to ensure our state’s vote count is audited and our certification is clean.”
Thomas emailed the two legislators again on Dec. 13, the day before Electoral College members met to cast their votes: “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,” she wrote, per the Post. The second email reportedly included a video with an unnamed narrator telling viewers, “You have only hours to act.”
The messages appeared to come from a form letter website that makes it easy for activists to write to lawmakers, the Washington Post noted: They were sent from an email address labeled “Ginni Thomas<[email protected]>.”
Still, Thomas had a personal connection to one of her recipients: Bolick’s husband is an associate justice on the Arizona Supreme Court who worked with Clarence Thomas earlier in his career and considers Thomas a mentor, the Post reported.
The Post’s records didn’t show a response from Bowers, while Bolick responded “I hope you and Clarence are doing great!” and added guidance for submitting complaints about potential voter fraud.
“Fun that this came to you!” Thomas wrote back, this time from a personal email address. “Just part of our campaign to help states feel America’s eyes!!!”
Bolick, who’s now a contender to be Arizona’s next secretary of state, later signed onto a letter with other Arizona Republicans calling for the state’s electoral votes to go to Trump or “be nullified completely until a full forensic audit can be conducted,” the Post noted, though the lawmaker denied to the paper that Thomas played a role in her decision to sign the letter.
