Ginni Thomas Apologizes To Clarence Thomas's Clerks -- And No One Else -- For Her Support Of Capitol Rioters

She's desperately trying to shore up cracks on the right the insurrection revealed.

(Photo by Gerald Martineau/Washington Post/Getty Images)

For folks that follow the ins and outs of the legal world (like most of Above the Law’s readers), Ginni Thomas’s politics are nothing new. Sure you might think brazenly political stands might be surprising for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice — after all, Clarence Thomas has to adjudicate all manner of controversies that intersect with his wife’s interests. For example, she led a grassroots movement in support of Trump’s travel ban, worked for right-wing think tanks, and has led efforts to defeat the Affordable Care Act and with no hard and fast Supreme Court recusal rules, well, that’s just an appearance of impropriety that we, as a nation, have let slide.

Anyway, Ginni’s been back in the spotlight, and that’s because she expressed her “LOVE” to the demonstrators on social media just a few hours before the violent insurrection on January 6th began. (Days later she amended the post to add “[Note: written before violence in US Capitol].”) Now according to a report by the Washington Post, she wrote an apology on a private listserv for those that have clerked for her husband for imposing her “lifetime passions” upon them:

“I owe you all an apology. I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions,” Thomas, who goes by Ginni, recently wrote to a private Thomas Clerk World email list of her husband’s staff over his three decades on the bench.

“My passions and beliefs are likely shared with the bulk of you, but certainly not all. And sometimes the smallest matters can divide loved ones for too long. Let’s pledge to not let politics divide THIS family, and learn to speak more gently and knowingly across the divide.”

Pardon me while I unstick my eyeballs from the back of my head — they got stuck from rolling my eyes SO DAMN HARD. Ginni Thomas has long trafficked in far right ideology and she doesn’t apologize for supporting folks who tried to violently overthrow the government or to those that were killed, injured, or otherwise traumatized by the events of January 6th. She’s only sad now because the coup attempt may have revealed a crack in the right.

Ginni Thomas’s attempt at brokering peace came after the listserv devolved into a spat about the riot:

After one law professor posted an article from Christianity Today about how rioters usurped religious symbols in the storming of the Capitol, former clerk Wendy Stone Long called it “offensive drivel” and wondered why it was shared.

“Many of my friends and I had been praying our knees off that January 6 would see light and truth being shed on what we believe in our hearts was likely a stolen election,” and that eventually “President Trump would be determined to be the legitimate winner,” wrote Long, a two-time U.S. Senate candidate from New York.

“Many of us marched peacefully and yes, many also prayed and shared another important message, ‘Jesus saves,’ ” she added.

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Then former Thomas clerk John Eastman, who is out of his job in legal academia after riling up the crowd at the January 6th rally proceeding the violence, got involved in the discussion:

[Eastman] wrote to the clerks group: “Rest assured that those of us involved in this are working diligently to ascertain the truth.”
That brought an angry response from Stephen F. Smith, a law professor at Notre Dame.

“If by ‘truth’ you mean what actually happened, as opposed to a false narrative, then I agree,” Smith wrote. “I hope (and trust) that you — and everyone on this list — agree that the search for truth doesn’t in any way justify insurrection, trying to kidnap and assassinate elected officials, attacking police officers, or making common cause with racists and anti-Semites bent on wanton violence and lawlessness.”

But of course, calling on truth and facts is considered wilding by some on the right.


headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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