extraordinary scheme to keep trump in office by substituting the will of legislatures for the will of voters. the report is already ramping up. the questions being asked about potential conflicts of interest that justice thomas has been facing since march. that was when the post and others obtained text messages that his wife, ginni thomas, sent in late 2020 to donald trump s chief of staff, mark meadows, pressing him to overturn the election result. questions that are no doubt being unpacked in realtime by the january 6th select committee today, which nbc news reported obtained those text messages a little less than two months ago. a few days before the new york times reported that the committee was likely to seek an interview with thomas. today s important update in the connection of a wife of a supreme court justice to the plot to overturn the results of a 2020 election is where we start this hour with some of our most favorite reporters and friends. luke broadwater is back, ne
when he takes the only dissenting vote. recusing him may be the least that would come out of that because i think that we re talking about the whole tenets of our democracy here. you know, i mean, luke, the questions that it would seem both institutions would want answered, both the court and the committee, would be, you know, first of all, it s hard if you re not a republican to explain how fringy ginni thomas s orientation is, even vis-a-vis the current republican party. she gave an award to mark meadows when he was in congress because he was in charge of the freedom caucus, which was to the right of republican party leadership at the time, a thorn in the side of the current leaders. i think she gave an award to james o keefe, sort of this right-wing media agitator. i mean, she s sort of to the fringe of the fringe on the right, and in terms of bannon and meadows, the two individuals who are obstructing subpoenas, and her husband, obstructing the release of information, i mean,
does anyone either on the committee or, you know, do people feel like they just have to answer and show they sought to disclose and be transparent about her role in it, or the perceived role that she would play? well, one thing i have heard is that if the january 6th committee won t take up this ginni thomas avenue of the investigation, that maybe one of the other committees on the hill will. perhaps the judiciary committee, because these a lot of these questions do actually get to the courts and the supreme court and its institutional gravitas or legitimacy, and if the january 6th committee says ginni thomas is too much of a fringe player, she s just someone yelling into the void, yes, she has powerful connections, but she s, you know she wasn t mark meadows. she wasn t at the right hand of donald trump while he was doing the things he was doing. perhaps it is a question for one
we ve seen a lot of them, there are obviously some that we haven t seen, and as they put this state electors investigation together and perhaps prepare to reveal it to the public, it sounds like there may be people on the receiving end of some of her communications. do you know what he s talking about there? you know, i mean, they could be talking about all the texts they have from mark meadows. they could have other evidence of what ginni thomas did or didn t do. one thing i ve been told by people who don t think that they should call her in is that they don t see her as a key player in the plot or scheme or plan, whatever word you want to use, to overthrow the election, as she was somebody railing against president biden, railing against the election results, but not really a key figure who was at the crux of decision making, and so maybe she s somebody on the outskirts who it s nice to interview but not essential to the investigation. so, that s one thing that i have heard for why
showed no indication of doing it. then, when the sort of the bombshell text messages came out with her imploring mark meadows to release the kraken and fight the election results, including to enlist sidney powell as trump s lead attorney to fight the results, there was public pressure on the committee to seek answers from her. they did say at the time or people close to the committee said at the time that they would likely call her in for an interview and we reported that. other outlets did as well. but then nothing happened, and it s been several weeks now and the last thing we heard from the chairman of the committee was that they hadn t talked about her in some time, so i checked in again today to see whether there would be now a letter to her or a subpoena and i was told it was still under consideration. so, i m not sure what the committee will do with ginni thomas now, but we do see from this washington post story