Burner Phones and Ginni Thomas’ Paranoid Ways

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Apr 1, 2022

Less mysterious but no less weird is the almost 30 text messages, also reported by CBS and The Washington Post, that were exchanged between Mark Meadows, then President Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, and Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative lawyer who also happens to be the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Ginni Thomas is a well-known activist for conservative causes who, among other far-right crusades, has openly opposed the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack and called for Republicans who serve on it to be expelled from the House Republican conference.

Now, thanks to the newly released texts, we also know her as a promoter of QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories — with a passion.

She urged Meadows to push for invalidation of the results of the 2020 presidential election, which she denounced as an “obvious fraud.”

She also sent messages from right-wing websites to underscore her own anger over the election outcome, including this rambling passage of paranoid partisanship: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”

She texted Meadows again the next day more bluntly. “Do not concede,” she wrote. “It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”

Meadows’ texts appeared to join the Manichaean casting of the election in apocalyptic terms. In one of his texts to Ginni Thomas, Meadows called the election a “fight of good versus evil” and added: “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues.”

“Thank you!! Needed that!” Thomas replied. “This plus a conversation with my best friend just now. … I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!”

Ginni Thomas’ political activism has been challenged, but her offense to America’s democratic values pales in my view compared with her husband’s refusal, so far, to recuse himself from cases involving the Jan. 6 attacks.

Since Clarence Thomas’ beliefs sit on the high court’s far-right end, his marriage might not make much difference to his views. But the American public deserves to have more reassurance than that.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)