Virginia Thomas, who is married to a Supreme Court justice, has agreed to talk to a panel on January 6.
Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, who is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a conservative activist, has agreed to talk to a House panel investigating the Jan. 6 uprising on her own time, her lawyer said Wednesday.
Mark Paoletta, Thomas's lawyer, said that Thomas is "eager to answer the committee's questions to clear up any misunderstandings" about her work on the 2020 election.
The committee has been trying for months to talk to Thomas to find out more about what she did to try to help former President Trump win the election he lost. In the weeks after the election, she texted with the chief of staff at the White House, Mark Meadows, and talked to lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin.
Thomas's willingness to talk comes at a time when the committee is getting ready to finish its work before the end of the year and is writing a final report about the U.S. Capitol insurrection. The panel said Wednesday that it will meet again on Sept. 28 for what is likely to be the last hearing in a series that began in the spring.
One of the things left for the panel to do as it tries to finish its work was to hear from Thomas. During its eight summer hearings, the panel has already talked to more than 1,000 people and shown some of their video testimony.
No one knows how much Thomas had to do with the attack on the Capitol before it happened. In the days after the Associated Press and other news outlets called the election for Biden, Thomas sent an email to two Arizona lawmakers telling them to choose "a clean slate of Electors" and "stand strong in the face of political and media pressure." Under the state's open records law, the AP was able to get the emails this year.
She has said in interviews that she went to the first pro-Trump rally on the morning of January 6, but left before Trump spoke and the crowds headed to the Capitol.
Thomas has been involved in conservative causes for a long time and has always supported Trump. She has said many times that her political work doesn't interfere with her husband's work.
"Like a lot of married couples, we have a lot of the same ideas, values, and hopes for America. But we both have our own jobs and our own thoughts and ideas. "Clarence doesn't talk to me about his work, and I don't involve him in mine," Thomas told the Washington Free Beacon in a March interview.
Justice Thomas was the only person who disagreed with the Supreme Court's decision in January to let a congressional committee look at the president's diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts, and handwritten notes about what happened on January 6.
Ginni Thomas has been very critical of the work of the committee. She even signed a letter to House Republicans calling for Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to be kicked out of the GOP conference because they joined the Jan. 6 congressional committee.
CNN was the first to say that Thomas was willing to do the interview.
It's not clear if next week's committee hearing will be a general summary of what the panel has learned so far or if it will focus on new information and evidence, such as what Thomas might have to say. The committee also talked to several of Trump's Cabinet secretaries at the end of July and the beginning of August. Some of them had talked about using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to get rid of Trump after the insurrection.
Cheney, the Republican vice chairwoman of the committee, said at the panel's most recent hearing in July that the committee "has much more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather."