Dear MoveOn member,
Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, actively participated in the effort to overturn the 2020 election both leading up to and after the deadly insurrection and has yet to be held accountable for it.1 And on top of that, because disgraced former president Donald Trump nominated her in 2020, she is still a board member of the Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the research arm of Congress.2 It’s completely unacceptable.
In 2022, evidence revealed that Ginni Thomas texted Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows—as well as legislators in Wisconsin and Arizona—urging them to overturn the election results. And she even attended the Stop the Steal rally preceding the insurrectionist attack on January 6, 2021.3,4,5
But despite the mounting evidence of her corruption, she has remained on this prominent board. The Trust Fund Board of the Library Congress manages over $200 million in donations for the library. We cannot trust an insurrectionist like Ginni Thomas to oversee and manage federal dollars.
President Biden has removed many Trump appointees from their posts.6 The time is NOW to remove Ginni Thomas from the board of the Library of Congress.
Ginni Thomas was a part of a group of far-right activists who pushed Trump to get rid of members of his administration who were thought to be “disloyal” to him and suggested that those members be replaced with people they chose.7 Months later, Trump nominated Ginni to the board of the Library of Congress.
Justice Clarence Thomas has a clear conflict of interest, and despite that, he has refused to recuse himself from Supreme Court cases related to January 6 and Trump’s claims of presidential immunity that would have implications for his wife. The corruption knows no bounds.
Both Ginni Thomas and Clarence Thomas have ties to Leonard Leo, the chief architect of the right-wing Supreme Court, and Harlan Crow, a billionaire and close friend of Clarence Thomas.8
Together, Leo, Thomas, and Crow have eroded our public institutions and have been the architects behind packing the Supreme Court with right-wing justices, and they’ve played a huge role in overturning legal precedents like Roe.
The Library of Congress’s mission is to “engage, inspire, and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity.”9 Insurrectionists like Ginni Thomas who have threatened our very government and democracy have no place on the board of the Library of Congress.
Thanks for all you do.
–Jensine, Isbah, Ankur, David, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. “Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court?” The New Yorker, January 21, 2022
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/is-ginni-thomas-a-threat-to-the-supreme-court
2. “Ginni Thomas should be removed from board managing Library of Congress funds,” CREW, April 4, 2022
https://www.citizensforethics.org/news/analysis/ginni-thomas-should-be-removed-from-board-managing-library-of-congress-funds/
3. “Ginni Thomas reportedly pressed Trump’s chief of staff on overturning the election,” NPR, March 25, 2022
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/25/1088720571/ginni-thomas-tex-messages-mark-meadows-2020-election
4. “Washington Post: 29 Arizona lawmakers received messages from Ginni Thomas in apparent bid to swap out Biden electors,” CNN, June 10, 2022
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/10/politics/ginni-thomas-arizona-lawmakers-biden-trump/index.html
5. “Ginni Thomas lobbied Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn 2020 election,” The Guardian, September 1, 2022
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/01/ginni-thomas-wisconsin-arizona-2020-election-overturn
6. “Biden administration works to clean house of Trump appointees,” CNN, February 6, 2021
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/06/politics/biden-removing-trump-board-appointments/index.html
7. “The Supreme Court’s Ginni Thomas problem is bigger than legal ethics,” MSNBC, March 31, 2023
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/supreme-court-ginni-thomas-clarence-thomas-donations-rcna77286
8. “What Ginni Thomas and Leonard Leo wrought: How a justice’s wife and a key activist started a movement,” Politico, September 10, 2023
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/10/ginni-thomas-leonard-leo-citizens-united-00108082
9. “A Library for All,” Library of Congress, accessed May 14, 2024
https://www.loc.gov/strategic-plan/
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