Former President Donald Trump praised the “courage and strength” of Ginny Thomas at a rally on Saturday, days after the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas met with congressional investigators about her efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 elections.
In a four-and-a-half-hour meeting with investigators Thursday, Thomas discussed her marriage to the conservative justice, claiming in an opening statement obtained by CNN that she “didn’t talk to him at all about the details of my volunteer campaign activities.”
Thomas, who attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, landed on the radar of the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol after exchanging text messages with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about with the elections. allegations of fraud surfaced during the ongoing congressional investigation.
Thomas had “significant concerns about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. And, as she told the Commission, her least and primary activity was focused on making sure the allegations of fraud and irregularities were investigated,” her attorney Mark Paoletta said after the hearing. of its deposition doors.
During a campaign appearance in Michigan, Trump claimed that Thomas told the House panel he “still believes the 2020 election was stolen,” praising her for “not withering under the pressure.”
“Do you know Ginny Thomas?” the former President asked the crowd. “He didn’t say, ‘Oh, well, I’d like to stay out of it. Of course, it was a great election.’ It was a rigged and stolen election. He didn’t wait and sit down and say, “Well, let me give you maybe a different answer than that [what] I’ve been saying that for the last two years.”
“No, no,” Trump continued, “he didn’t wither under pressure like so many others who are weak people and idiots … He said what he thought, he said what he believed in.”
Thomas, who has previously criticized the House probe into Jan. 6, has long been a fixture of conservative activism — even becoming a persistent annoyance to some Trump White House officials as he sought to place friends and allies in higher government roles throughout his presidency. She and her husband attended a private dinner with Trump and his wife Melania at the White House shortly after the 2018 midterm elections, though CNN previously reported that her direct interactions with the former President were fairly limited beyond this meeting.
But on Saturday, Trump praised Thomas as “a great woman,” comparing her to countless former aides and allies who admitted in their own testimony to a House panel that they themselves did not believe Trump’s allegations of voter fraud after the 2020 election .
Thomas said she “never talked” with her husband about “any of the legal challenges to the 2020 election,” addressing ethical questions raised after the Supreme Court ruled last year in a case related to Jan. 6. Thomas and Meadows sent repeated messages to overturn the election results.
Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the committee, said Thomas confirmed during her testimony that she still believes the election was stolen, adding that “at this point we’re glad she came in.”
