Virginia Thomas (aviator)

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas ( Lamp; born February 23, 1957) is an American attorney and conservative activist. In 1987, she married Clarence Thomas, who became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1991. Her conservative commentary and activism have made her a controversial figure, especially because spouses of Supreme Court justices typically avoid politics.

Thomas began her career working for Republican Hal Daub while he was a member of the United States House of Representatives. After Thomas graduated from Creighton University School of Law, she worked for the United States Chamber of Commerce. She later worked for the United States Department of Labor and as an aide to Republican Dick Armey while he was a member of the House of Representatives. In 2000, she joined The Heritage Foundation, where she was a liaison between the conservative think tank and the George W. Bush administration. In 2009, Thomas founded Liberty Central, a conservative political advocacy nonprofit organization associated with the Tea Party movement. She founded Liberty Consulting in 2010.

Thomas supported Donald Trump during his presidency, offering the administration recommendations on individuals to hire through her work with the conservative Groundswell group. Following Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election, she repeatedly urged Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows to take steps to overturn the result. Thomas also emailed state lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin, urging them to ignore the results of the 2020 presidential election and vote instead for an alternate slate of electors. She made an early social media endorsement of the Trump rally that preceded the January 2021 attack on the United States Capitol before the violence took place, and she later apologized for contributing to a rift among her husband's former Supreme Court clerks concerning that riot.

Early life and education

Thomas grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, the youngest of four children born to Donald Lamp, an engineer who owned his own firm, and Marjorie Lamp, a stay-at-home mother. Her parents were Republicans.

Thomas attended Westside High School in Omaha, where she was a member of student government, the debate club, and the Republican club. While she was in high school, her ambition was to be elected to Congress. She enrolled in a women's college in Virginia because of its proximity to Washington, D.C., subsequently transferred to the University of Nebraska, and then moved to Creighton University to be closer to a boyfriend. She received a Bachelor of Arts in political science and business communication from Creighton University (1979) and a Juris Doctor from Creighton University School of Law (1983), after a hiatus working as a legislative aide for Representative Hal Daub.

Career

1981–1991

When Daub took office in 1981, Thomas moved to Washington, D.C., and worked in his office for 18 months. After completing her degree at Creighton University School of Law in 1983, she worked one more year for Daub in Washington as his legislative director. From 1985 to 1989, she was employed as an attorney and labor relations specialist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, attending congressional hearings where she represented the interests of the business community. Her advocacy included arguing against the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. In 1989, she became manager of employee relations at the Chamber of Commerce.

1991–2009

In 1991, Thomas returned to government service in the Legislative Affairs Office of the U.S. Department of Labor, where she argued against comparable-worth legislation that would have mandated equal pay for women and men in jobs deemed to be comparable.

That year, her husband, Clarence Thomas, was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to fill the open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court left by the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall. She attended the contentious U.S. Senate confirmation hearings and stood by her husband as he was accused of sexual harassment.

During the confirmation hearings, several Democratic senators questioned whether her job with the Labor Department could create a conflict of interest for her husband if he were to be seated on the Supreme Court. After her husband was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48, she described the televised scrutiny and confirmation process as a " trial by fire".

Her next job was as a policy analyst for Representative Dick Armey, who was the House Republican Conference chairman.

By 2000, she was working for the Heritage Foundation, where she collected résumés for potential presidential appointments in the George W. Bush administration when the Supreme Court was deciding ''Bush v. Gore''. She continued to work at the Heritage Foundation during the administration of George W. Bush, serving as the White House Liaison for the think tank.

2009–2016

In late 2009, Thomas established the nonprofit lobbying group Liberty Central to organize conservative activists, issue legislative scorecards for U.S. Congress members, and be involved in elections. The group was aimed at opposing what Thomas called the "leftist tyranny'" of President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, and "protecting the core founding principles" of the nation. Thomas's lobbying activities were raised as a potential source of conflict of interest for her husband. Thomas was interviewed by Sean Hannity on his Fox News show '' Hannity'' in June 2010. Asked about potential conflicts between her Liberty Central activities and her husband's position, Thomas replied that "there's a lot of judicial wives and husbands out there causing trouble. I'm just one of many." Liberty Central ceased operations in 2012.

In February 2011, '' Politico'' reported that Thomas was the head of a new company, Liberty Consulting, which filed incorporation papers in mid-November 2010. The company's website stated that clients could use Thomas's "experience and connections" to help with "governmental affairs efforts" and political donation strategies. '' The Washington Post'' described Liberty Consulting as "a one-woman shop" where Thomas advised political donors how to direct funds in the post-''Citizens United v. FEC'' landscape. Also in 2011, Thomas became a special correspondent for '' The Daily Caller''.

2016–present

Thomas endorsed Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries. She supported Donald Trump after he won the Republican nomination, and has served on the advisory council of Turning Point USA. Thomas has drawn attention for making controversial social media posts; ''The Washington Post'' wrote that she had shared "nakedly partisan, erroneous propaganda". On Facebook, she has shared a George Soros conspiracy theory meme and criticized gun control advocates such as survivors of the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

Thomas is a member of the informal conservative Groundswell group, which she founded with the support of Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor. According to a February 2020 report by Jonathan Swan in '' Axios'', Thomas actively urged Trump to change the personnel in his administration. Swan reported that Thomas had given Trump a memo with names of individuals recommended by the Groundswell network.

On May 28, 2020, Trump appointed Thomas as a member of the trust fund board of the Library of Congress.

She is a member of the conservative Council for National Policy, and in 2019, she became part of its board.

Efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election

According to ''The New York Times'', in the days following the 2020 presidential election, the board of the Council for National Policy issued a call to action to its members to keep Trump in power, despite his loss. The call to action instructed members to "pressure Republican lawmakers into challenging the election results and appointing alternate slates of electors." In May 2022, ''The Washington Post'' obtained emails Thomas had sent to Arizona legislators beginning days after the November 2020 election, urging them to choose "a clean slate of Electors." Though the emails did not mention either presidential candidate, Biden had been declared the winner in Arizona. She wrote the emails on a platform that allowed pre-written form emails to be sent to multiple elected officials, and she sent them to 29 lawmakers. In September 2022, ''The Washington Post'' reported that Thomas emailed Wisconsin state senator Kathy Bernier and Wisconsin state representative Gary Tauchen with verbatim copies of the Arizona emails urging them to set aside the results of the popular vote and choose their own electors.

Prior to January 6, Thomas promoted a Stop the Steal rally on Facebook. Thomas told the '' Washington Free Beacon'' that she attended the Stop the Steal rally that preceded the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack but left before Trump took the stage at noon.

After January 6, baseless claims that Thomas had paid to shuttle demonstrators to Washington D.C. proliferated online. A year after the attack, fact checkers again debunked claims that Thomas was one of the organizers of the events of January 6, 2021.

''The Washington Post'' reported that after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Thomas, on a private email LISTSERV of her husband's former law clerks, expressed her apologies for contributing to a rift among the group. The internal rift reportedly concerned "pro-Trump postings and former Thomas clerk John Eastman, who spoke at the rally and represented Trump in some of his failed lawsuits filed to overturn the 2020 election results." Eastman is a close friend of both Thomases.

An April 2022 Quinnipiac poll found that 52% of Americans said that, in light of Ginni Thomas's texts to Trump's White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows about overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election, Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from cases about the 2020 election.

Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack

In March 2022, texts between Thomas and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows from 2020 were handed to the Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. The texts show her repeatedly urging Meadows to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and repeating conspiracy theories about ballot fraud. She urged that conspiracy theorist attorney Sidney Powell be retained by the Trump campaign efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In the quoted texts, Thomas described an unknown number of American citizens that she hoped would be "living in barges off GITMO" in accord with the QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theory that President Biden, his family, and thousands of state and county election officials, administrators, and volunteers successfully orchestrated and performed a vast conspiracy to rig the 2020 elections across thousands of administrative districts or wards. Public perception of the likelihood of such QAnon-style conspiracy theories influencing a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was widespread enough that President Biden was asked what he thought about whether Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from any January 6-related cases. He replied that the answer is for others to determine, mentioning the congressional investigating committee and the Department of Justice. Under U.S. law, each justice of the court is the main and possibly only person who has power over his or her own recusal.

CNN reported in June 2022 that the Select Committee possessed email correspondence between Thomas and John Eastman. The emails were part of Eastman's correspondence related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In the wake of revelations regarding her correspondence with Eastman, Thomas was asked to testify before the committee. In an interview with the Daily Caller, Thomas stated that she "can't wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them." Thomas previously signed on to a letter to House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, calling for the removal of Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger from the Republican conference for their participation on the Select Committee and describing the January 6 investigations as "bringing disrespect to our country's rule of law." Mark Paoletta, Thomas's attorney, wrote the committee days later that she would not agree to be interviewed unless additional information came to light that might warrant testimony, but one of her attorneys subsequently announced she would speak voluntarily with the committee. The committee interviewed her on September 29.

Days after it became known Eastman and Thomas had communicated by email, Eastman posted on his new Substack blog one email that he captioned, "OMG, Mrs. Thomas asked me to give an update about election litigation to her group. Stop the Presses!" In the December 4, 2020 email, Thomas invited Eastman to speak four days later at a gathering of "Frontliners," which she described as a group of "grassroots state leaders." A private Facebook group named "FrontLiners for Liberty," which included over 50 people and was created in August 2020, showed Thomas as an administrator. The group's front page carried a banner stating, "the enemy of America...is the radical fascist left." After CNBC asked Thomas about the group, its public pages were either made private or deleted. CNBC also contacted Stephanie Coleman, who was also listed as a group administrator. She is the widow of former Texas solicitor general Greg Coleman, who had clerked for Clarence Thomas. Numerous photos of her and Thomas are on her personal Facebook page, including one of both of them with former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon in December 2016. The Thomas email was among those federal judge David Carter ordered Eastman to release to the January 6 committee in June 2022, as Eastman sought to withhold them. Carter found ten documents he ordered released to the committee relating to three December 2020 meetings by a secretive group strategizing about how to overturn the election, which included who he characterized as a "high-profile" leader. Carter noted one email in particular among those he ordered released that contained what he found was likely evidence of a crime. Thomas attended a meeting of FrontLiners for Liberty on March 6, 2021, at which a speaker declared Trump was still the "legitimate president," to enthusiastic applause.

Thomas also emailed state lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin, urging them to ignore the results of the 2020 presidential election and vote instead for an alternate slate of electors.

Personal life

Virginia and Clarence Thomas married in 1987. The couple live in Virginia.

Thomas converted from Protestantism to her husband's Catholic faith in 2002. She was inspired by his devotion of praying the Litany of Humility and participating in the Mass. She credits Justice Antonin Scalia and his wife Maureen for helping her husband back into the Church.

On October 9, 2010, Thomas left a voicemail message for Anita Hill, whose accusations of sexual harassment against her husband complicated his Supreme Court nomination hearings 19 years earlier. In the voicemail, Thomas said that Hill should apologize to her husband. Hill responded that there was nothing to apologize for and said that her 1991 testimony about her interactions with Clarence Thomas was truthful.

In 2011, Clarence Thomas amended 20 years worth of his financial disclosures to include Virginia Thomas's places of employment.

Lifespring

In the 1980s, while a congressional aide, Thomas took training with the self-awareness program Lifespring. In 1987, she related to '' The Washington Post'' that, during her training several years earlier, she had been "confused and troubled" by lessons such as one where trainees were told to disrobe to bikinis and bathing suits then "made fun of fat people's bodies and ridiculed one another with sexual questions". After realizing that membership in her Lifespring group was separating her from her family, friends, and co-workers, Thomas began what proved to be a difficult and months-long process of breaking away. At one point, she hid in another part of the U.S. to avoid a constant barrage of high-pressure phone calls from Lifespring members, who felt they had a duty to keep her in the organization.

Thomas came to believe that Lifespring was a cult. After leaving the group in 1985, she sought counseling and joined the Cult Awareness Network. She became a critic of controversial religious groups, speaking on panels and organizing anti-cult workshops for congressional staffers in 1986 and 1988. In a 1991 interview, Thomas remarked, "I was once in a group that used mind control techniques", and she called its members "pretty scary people".

References

Further reading

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External links

Profile
at OpenSecrets.org
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Virginia
1957 births
American Roman Catholics
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Protestantism
Creighton University School of Law alumni
Creighton University alumni
Critics of new religious movements
Former members of new religious movements
The Heritage Foundation
Lawyers from Omaha, Nebraska
Lawyers from Washington, D.C.
Living people
Nebraska Republicans
Tea Party movement activists
Virginia Republicans
Washington, D.C., Republicans
American conspiracy theorists
People associated with the 2020 United States presidential election
Controversies of the 2020 United States presidential election
Protests against results of elections
American women activists
Activists from Nebraska