Virginia “Ginni” Thomas mentioned her friend Connie Hair, who happened to be GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert’s chief of staff, in text messages to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows around the same time the Texas Republican congressman was filing lawsuits challenging Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election, CNN reports. The messages between Thomas—the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—and Meadows have reignited conflict-of-interest concerns, as the lawsuits filed by Gohmert wound up before the Supreme Court, even though they ultimately failed. In one Nov. 14, 2020, text, Thomas is said to have quoted Hair’s own words to Meadows, writing her name at the end: “This war is psychological. PSYOP. It’s what I did in the military. They are using every weapon they have to try to make us quit... It is fake, fraud and if people would take a deep breath and look at things through that filter we will see this through and win,” she wrote, according to CNN.
Hair, a top aide to Gohmert, had already been vocal about her voter-fraud allegations on social media, and she and Thomas are said to have had a long-running relation ship. A sourcecited by CNN told the news outlet that Hair was not aware of Gohmert’s lawsuits over the election, and that Thomas and Hair never discussed any lawsuits. But the new details threaten to intensify calls for Thomas to recuse himself from election- or Jan. 6-related cases. As Stephen Gillers of NYU School of Law told CNN: “Mrs. Thomas has a First Amendment right to speak publicly and forcefully on issues that might come before the Supreme Court without thereby forcing recusal of her husband. But in the current situation, her interests are caught up in cases that could come before the court.” Ginni Thomas, Hair, and Gohmert’s office have not commented on the report.
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