A follower of conspiracy theses
Her name is Virginia, but everyone calls her Ginni. With her husband of thirty-five years, the conservative judge of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas, the American attracts all eyes these days. At the end of March, one day apart, the New York TimesMagazine and the New Yorker devoted two long articles to the couple (in which they did not collaborate). A few days earlier were revealed, as part of the parliamentary inquiry into the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, his enraged text messages sent in November 2020 to Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows. She encouraged him to continue the battle against this election “fraudulent” and was very close to conspiracy theses. She could very soon be called to testify before the commission to explain her role in the events.
A fervent hard-right activist
A professional activist, Ginni Thomas joined, in 2019, the steering committee of the Council for National Policy, an influence group of more than 400 members which, since the 1980s, has embodied the hard right in Washington: there are members the Republican Party, but also conservative Christians, Tea Party activists (this ultra-conservative movement was born in the 2000s, in reaction to the presidency of Barack Obama) and supporters of Donald Trump. At 65, this professional activist is also chairman of Groundswell, another group in which she meets, among others, the former adviser to the White House Steve Bannon. “When some only talk, she acts”, says the businessman, who has become a figure of the global extreme right.
An unwavering supporter of Donald Trump
Intrigued by the popularity of Judge Thomas (“In some of my meetings, he is more applauded than me. What is this story ? », would he have been surprised during his campaign), Donald Trump invites, at the end of 2018, the couple to have lunch at the White House. Rushing into the half-open door and using her many connections, Ginni Thomas will try throughout the end of her mandate to weigh in to have her friends and allies appointed to key positions. After the defeat of November 2020 and the riots of January 6, it throws all its forces into the battle to exonerate the Trump administration, implicated by the commission of inquiry of the Parliament.
A “wife of” suspected of influencing her husband
“Is Ginni Thomas a danger to the Supreme Court? », wondered, on March 31, the New Yorker. Already in 2011, more than seventy Democratic parliamentarians had asked her husband not to participate in the deliberations on the reform of the health system driven by Barack Obama, on the pretext that his wife had actively campaigned against it. The right-wing militancy of the latter raises the question of the supposed neutrality of the judges of the Supreme Court. Ginni Thomas thus admitted having participated in the march on the Capitol on January 6 (before it degenerated) and, when the Supreme Court was seized to decide on the question of the commission’s access to the archives of the House Blanche, only one judge objected: Clarence Thomas. Again, the Democrats called for his withdrawal.