The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol is in possession of a lot of text messages in which former White House chief of employees Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas, the spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, speak about keeping President Donald Trump in office, an individual accustomed to the investigation mentioned.
Thomas and Meadows exchanged the messages got here as Trump allies had been discussing a authorized problem to the outcomes of the 2020 election. The Supreme Court, in an unsigned opinion in December 2020, dismissed a problem from Republican state attorneys common to overturn the outcomes.
The text messages had been in a trove of paperwork and messages that Meadows turned over to the Jan. 6 committee earlier than he stopped cooperating with the investigation.
The committee has not spoken with or engaged with Thomas.
CNN first reported that the panel was in possession of the text messages.
A committee spokesperson declined to touch upon the content material of the texts. The Washington Post and CBS News obtained copies of the messages, which had been reviewed by every news outlet and confirmed by 5 individuals who have seen the committee’s paperwork.
The 29 messages date from November 2020 to mid-January 2021, the stories mentioned.
In one of many messages, dated Nov. 10 — after news organizations had referred to as the election for Joe Biden — Thomas informed Meadows he ought to encourage Trump to not 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 is reported to say.
In one other message two weeks later, Meadows is reported to have informed 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 messages. The Post and CBS News reported that none of the messages directly referred to 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 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 mentioned.
In the identical interview, Thomas acknowledged that she attended Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, however mentioned she left earlier than he spoke. She additionally denied a report in The New York Times that she had been concerned in planning the rally.
“I played no role with those who were planning and leading the Jan. 6 events,” Thomas mentioned.
In January, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s effort to cease the National Archives from giving the Jan. 6 committee a whole bunch of pages of paperwork from his time in the White House. Clarence Thomas was the lone justice to say the courtroom ought to have granted Trump’s movement to dam the archives from handing the fabric over whereas the case is below evaluate.
