The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is expected to seek an interview with Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, multiple media outlets reported Monday.
The committee’s interest in Thomas, who goes by Ginni, followed the reported revelation of text messages from late 2020 showing her urging then-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to try to overturn Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
The committee will discuss in a closed-door meeting Monday evening whether to call Thomas to appear before the panel for questioning over those texts, NBC News reported, citing two sources. CNN first reported that the panel is likely to reach out to Thomas in the coming weeks.
That discussion will follow another meeting in which the committee will vote to recommend that the House hold Trump allies Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro in contempt for refusing to cooperate with the investigation.
Meanwhile, on the morning of the vote, a federal judge ruled in a civil court case that Trump-allied lawyer John Eastman must hand over more than 100 documents subpoenaed by the House investigators. The judge’s ruling also said that Trump likely broke the law by “corruptly” attempting to obstruct Congress from confirming Biden’s win.
The bipartisan select committee is tasked with investigating the facts and causes surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in which hundreds of Trump’s supporters violently overwhelmed police officers and stormed into the U.S. Capitol. The mob temporarily derailed Congress’ efforts to confirm Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.
The House panel has interviewed more than 500 witnesses, received tens of thousands of documents and issued at least 80 subpoenas related to the probe. But targeting the wife of Thomas, a sitting Supreme Court justice and a conservative favorite, would mark a politically volatile development in a probe that has already faced a barrage of Republican accusations of partisan bias.
A cache of 29 text messages between Thomas and Meadows were reportedly found among the more than 2,000 messages Meadows gave to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by a mob of Trump’s supporters.
After news outlets projected Biden the winner of the 2020 election, Thomas on Nov. 10 reportedly wrote 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 reportedly texted 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.”
The texts were revealed days after the Supreme Court revealed that Clarence Thomas, 73, had been hospitalized with an infection. Thomas was discharged Friday morning, a week after he was admitted for “flu-like symptoms,” according to the court.
Thomas did not participate in oral arguments before the court last week. He participated remotely during Monday’s oral arguments.
