Liz Cheney says the Jan. 6 panel is “fully prepared to consider a subpoena” for Judge Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni, over her efforts to overturn the 2020 election
- Liz Cheney, vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, said lawmakers are locked in talks with Ginni Thomas’ attorneys
- “We hope that she is willing to come voluntarily,” Cheney told CNN on Sunday
- Ginni Thomas is a longtime conservative activist who has close ties to Trump
- Text messages released by multiple outlets show their attempts to pressure the ex-president’s allies to push through his allegations of voter fraud in 2020
- It comes after Cheney said at Thursday’s hearing that more will come in the fall
Jan. 6 committee vice chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Sunday suggested that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, be coerced into her investigation of last year’s uprising in the Capitol.
The Wyoming Republican told CNN’s State of the Union that her committee “is fully prepared to consider a subpoena for Thomas” if talks with her legal team fail.
“The committee is busy with your attorney,” Cheney said. “We hope that she is willing to come voluntarily.”
She indicated that the committee would be reluctant to take such an explosive step now – but may do so in the future. It comes days after Cheney announced more hearings are scheduled for September at the end of his set this summer, which ends Thursday.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Cheney said of the subpoena.
“We have certainly spoken to a number of people who are similarly situated in relation to the discussion she was having.”
Text messages held by the committee show Thomas urging members of Donald Trump’s inner circle to investigate his claims that the 2020 election was rigged, multiple outlets have reported.
The Jan. 6 committee is in talks with attorneys for Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, Rep. Liz Cheney said
She had campaigned for Kraken attorney Sidney Powell, whose ideas were so extreme that Trump and his other attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, severed ties with her.
Thomas also exchanged messages with John Eastman, known for authoring a legal memo saying then-Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally overturn the election, according to the Washington Post.
And the longtime Republican aide has also had private meetings with Trump alongside her husband — who is now the senior lawyer on the Supreme Court following the resignation of Justice Stephen Breyer last month.
The news’s release sparked calls from the left for Clarence Thomas to withdraw from election-related cases and even be removed from the bench.
He was the only dissent when the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could not withhold documents from the Jan. 6 committee, a vote that has been ringing ethical alarm bells ever since.
Her role in spreading Trump’s voter fraud lies has brought ethical scrutiny to her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
Thomas’ involvement with the panel, Cheney revealed Sunday, is a relatively recent development in the 18 months it has been investigating the Capitol riot.
In May, committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss) told CBS News that they had no intention of subpoenaing Thomas.
“She wasn’t really the focus of the broader committee’s work … She just happens to be the wife of a Supreme Court justice,” Thompson said at the time.
If Thomas complies with the committee in any way, it could provide important insights for the next hearings – which Cheney announced at the end of the last series of the panel.
“Even as we conduct our ninth hearing, we still have a lot more work to do. We have far more evidence to share with the American people and even more to collect,” Cheney said Thursday.
“So our committee will spend August following new information on multiple fronts before convening further hearings in September.”