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The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol is in possession of a number of text messages between former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, where they talk about keeping Donald Trump in office, a person familiar with the investigation told NBC News.
The back and forth between Thomas and Meadows came as Trump allies were discussing a legal challenge to the results of 2020 election. The Supreme Court, in a December 2020 unsigned opinion, dismissed a challenge from Republican attorneys general at the state level to overturn the election results.
The text message exchanges between Thomas and Meadows were included in a trove of documents and messages that Meadows turned over to the Jan. 6 committee before he stopped cooperating with the probe.
The committee has not spoken with or engaged Thomas.
CNN first reported that the panel was in possession of the text messages.
A committee spokesperson declined to comment on the content of the texts, but the Washington Post and CBS News obtained copies of the messages which were reviewed by each news outlet and confirmed by five people who have seen the committee’s documents.
The 29 messages in the panel’s possession date from November 2020 to mid-January 2021, the reports said.
In one of the messages, dated Nov. 10 — after news organizations had called the election for Joe Biden — Thomas told Meadows he should encourage Trump not to concede.
“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!…The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” the message reportedly said.
In another message two weeks later, Meadows reportedly told Thomas the election battle was a “fight of good versus evil.”
“Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs,” Meadows added.
NBC News has not reviewed the text messages. The Post and CBS reported that none of the messages directly referenced Clarence Thomas or the Supreme Court.
NBC News has reached out to Meadows’ attorney and Ginni Thomas for comment.
In an interview with the Washington Free Beacon earlier this month, Ginni Thomas, a staunch Trump supporter, said she and her husband stay in separate lanes. “Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” she said.
In the same interview, Thomas acknowledged she had attended Trump’s rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, but said she left before the former president spoke. She also denied a report in The New York Times that she’d been involved in planning the rally.
“I played no role with those who were planning and leading the Jan. 6 events,” Thomas said.
In January, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s effort to stop the National Archives from giving the Jan. 6 committee hundreds of pages of documents from his time in the White House. Thomas was the lone justice to say the court should have granted the Trump motion to block the National Archives from handing the material over while the case is under review.
Source: This post first appeared on NBC News
