During Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the panelists condemned Ginni Thomas, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for still promoting Donald Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election during her testimony before the Jan. 6 committee.
Following Ginni Thomas’s testimony, chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) revealed that she still believes the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and she emerged smiling from the interview with lawmakers, a demeanor that sparked widespread criticism.
“Thomas first came under scrutiny for sending text messages to Mark Meadows encouraging then-president Trump not to concede the 2020 election,” MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski said. “In her opening statement to the committee yesterday, she said her husband, Justice Thomas, was, quote, ‘completely unaware of my texts with Mark Meadows until this committee leaked them to the press.’ Her attorney also issued a statement yesterday arguing that her activities relating to the 2020 election were, quote, ‘minimal.'”
She added: “Just the fact that she’s still an election denier is staggering to me. It defies every court ruling. Fair to say it defies logic at this point.”
Co-host Willie Geist expressed alarm by her demeanor.
“We’ve seen some humility from other people who have been called in front of that panel realizing that now that the screws are being turned, it’s time to admit what’s true, that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. “Not her, in fact, emerged proudly from the long deposition smiling and proud of her position on that,” he said.
Geist pointed out that Thomas played a key role in connecting various participants in the attempted coup to one another and her involvement raises questions about whether her husband should recuse himself from any cases related to the 2020 election.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson agreed, saying: “If you had asked me a few years ago about Ginni Thomas, I would have said she is a far-right Republican activist, but I would have sort of left it there. Now she just appears just to be part of the demented fringe, really, just so far out there that she can’t see reality anymore.”
“The idea, you know, she is the wife of a Supreme Court justice, the idea that someone that close to the pinnacle of judicial power in this country does not believe in our justice system, does not believe in results of more than 60, you know, court cases, or more than 60 judges looking at this question of, as if there were a question about the 2020 election and saying, no, this is garbage. This is ridiculous. None of these claims is true, and she rejects all of that. That it’s irrational is not a strong enough word for it. I just keep coming back to demented. It just doesn’t make any sense,” Robinson added.
Panelist Jonathan Lemire, the White House bureau chief for Politico, said he was troubled by Thomas insisting that President Joe Biden had not been duly elected.
“She is still saying this now, and let’s remember, this isn’t just her saying yesterday, on Jan. 6, this isn’t just her texting with Mark Meadows saying keep up the fight,” Lemire said. “She was working with state legislatures, pushing two different states, Wisconsin and Arizona, to seat alternate false set of electors to try to overturn Joe Biden’s win.”
“She is into this up to her neck,” he added. “And Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, I know she claims that there’s a wall between the two of them, and they don’t speak about this sort of stuff. Let’s remember he was the one dissenting voice in the Trump case about keeping the documents at Mar-a-Lago, and many lawmakers, Democrats, have called him to recuse himself for Trump-related efforts going forward. It’s hard not to be really worried about the implications of Ginni Thomas’s beliefs.”
Watch the discussion below from MSNBC:
