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Trump campaign lawyers saw Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their most likely ally in their fight to overturn the 2020 election, with one writing that the judge — whose wife was herself fighting to block President Joe Biden’s victory — represented their “only chance” to block the counting of Georgia’s electoral votes before Jan. 6, according to emails obtained by Politico.
“We want to frame things so that Thomas will be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying that Georgia is beyond a reasonable doubt,” attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in an email sent on Dec. 31, 2020. Thomas is “our only chance to get a favorable court opinion by Jan. 6, which could delay Georgia’s recount in Congress.”
According to Politico, the emails were initially released to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 riot. Chesebro did not immediately respond to a message from Insider seeking comment.
In response to that December email, Politico reported, another Trump lawyer, John Eastman, wrote: “I think I agree with that.” Eastman, a senior fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute, said a favorable decision by Thomas would “give momentum to the Georgia Legislature,” referring to an effort to get the Republican-led body to pass an alternative, pro-Trump bundle of fakes voters. “I’ve had a lot of calls from them indicating that they’re leaning that way,” Eastman claimed.
Eastman is best known as the author of a memo he gave to Insider last year falsely claiming that former Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally block the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, an argument that one legal expert described as ” proposed coup cloaked in legal language’.
Eastman did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Thomas has a reputation as a steadfast conservative voice on the Supreme Court. His wife, Ginny Thomas, is a right-wing activist who, after the 2020 election, urged lawmakers in her role as a leading member of the “Stop the Steal” movement to overturn Biden’s victory in battleground states like Arizona. She recently testified before the House Select Committee on Jan. 6, which revealed messages between her and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and once again falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen, according to the committee chairman , Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson. she has claimed that she does not talk to her husband about her own political dealings.
In January 2022, Judge Thomas was the only judge to side with former President Donald Trump in a case over whether he should comply with a January 6 committee request for documents. Three months later, following a report on his wife’s activism, two dozen Democrats wrote a letter arguing that Thomas should step down — or, at the very least, recuse himself from all future cases involving the 2020 election.
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