Ginni Thomas Attends "Stop the Steal" Rally Before Capitol Attack, CNP Board Member at Insurrection

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and board member of the Council for National Policy’s lobbying arm CNP Action, attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, before the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Thomas acknowledged her attendance in March 2022 after lawmakers revealed her presence, stating that she attended the rally but left before President Trump took the stage at noon. Her participation in the rally, combined with her CNP Action board position and her extensive text message advocacy for overturning the 2020 election results, placed the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice at the center of efforts to subvert the democratic transfer of power.

Ginni Thomas’s attendance at the January 6 rally represented the culmination of her two-month campaign to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory. Between November 2020 and January 2021, Thomas had sent numerous text messages to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows urging him to pursue increasingly extreme measures to keep Trump in power, including pressuring state legislators to reject certified election results and replace Biden electors with Trump electors. She attended CNP post-election strategy meetings in November 2020 where the organization coordinated messaging around election fraud claims and discussed strategies for challenging Biden’s victory.

Thomas initially faced unsubstantiated accusations that she had funded 80 buses to transport Trump supporters to Washington for the January 6 rally, but these claims proved to be misinformation. The buses were chartered by Turning Point USA, a conservative youth organization on whose advisory board Thomas served, but there was no evidence she personally paid for or arranged the transportation. However, her service on Turning Point USA’s advisory board connected her organizationally to the group that did sponsor bus transportation for rallygoers who would participate in the events of January 6.

The rally Thomas attended featured speeches by Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and other figures promoting false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen through widespread fraud. Rally speakers urged the assembled crowd to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s electoral victory. Thomas stated she left before Trump’s noon speech, though her presence at the rally demonstrated her support for the broader effort to overturn the election results.

Thomas’s rally attendance came just hours before Congress would convene to certify the Electoral College results—a process that her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas, might potentially be called upon to adjudicate if legal challenges reached the Supreme Court. Her public participation in an event explicitly organized to pressure Congress to reject the election results created an extraordinary conflict of interest: the spouse of a Supreme Court justice was actively participating in political efforts that could generate cases her husband would decide.

Following the Capitol attack, which left five people dead and 140 police officers injured, Thomas expressed regret about the violence but maintained her belief in election fraud claims. In texts to Mark Meadows on January 6, after the attack had begun, Thomas wrote: “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” This message, sent while the Capitol was under siege, revealed her continued support for the movement even as its violent elements attacked the seat of American democracy.

The revelation of Thomas’s rally attendance came from congressional investigations into January 6, particularly the House Select Committee’s inquiry. In March 2022, Washington Free Beacon and CNN reported that Thomas had attended the rally, prompting her to acknowledge her presence for the first time. Her acknowledgment came only after lawmakers had already obtained evidence of her attendance, suggesting an initial intent to conceal her participation.

Democratic lawmakers argued that Thomas’s January 6 rally attendance, combined with her texts to Meadows urging efforts to overturn the election, demonstrated that she had been “instrumental in planning” the events leading to the Capitol attack and “bringing the insurrectionists to the Capitol.” While direct evidence that Thomas personally planned the rally or organized transportation remained disputed, her CNP Action board position placed her in the organizational network that coordinated conservative movement response to Biden’s victory, and her Turning Point USA advisory board connection linked her to the group that chartered buses bringing Trump supporters to Washington.

The broader context of Thomas’s January 6 attendance included her deep involvement in conservative movement coordination through the Council for National Policy. As a CNP Action board member since 2019, Thomas participated in the secretive organization’s strategic planning and coordination meetings three times annually. CNP members and affiliated groups played significant roles in promoting election fraud narratives and organizing January 6 events. Thomas’s attendance at the rally thus represented not just individual political activism but participation as a conservative movement leader with organizational connections to the coordination infrastructure.

Justice Clarence Thomas’s subsequent refusal to recuse himself from cases related to January 6 and the 2020 election created intense controversy. In January 2022, Justice Thomas was the sole dissenting vote when the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s effort to block the January 6 Committee from obtaining White House records. Thomas voted to grant Trump’s request without explanation, raising questions about whether his wife’s involvement in January 6 events influenced his judicial decision-making. The revelation that Ginni Thomas had attended the January 6 rally and had texted Mark Meadows urging efforts to overturn the election made Justice Thomas’s participation in election-related cases appear to be a profound conflict of interest.

Congressional Democrats, led by Representative Jamie Raskin, called for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from all cases related to January 6 and the 2020 election, or for the House to investigate whether grounds existed for impeachment based on the appearance of corruption created by his wife’s activities and his refusal to recuse. However, as of late 2023, Justice Thomas had not recused himself from election-related cases, and the Supreme Court’s lack of binding ethics requirements meant there was no mechanism to force recusal.

The January 6 Committee ultimately chose not to include extensive discussion of Ginni Thomas’s role in its final report, a decision that disappointed some observers who believed her CNP board position and rally attendance warranted fuller investigation. The Committee did obtain her text messages with Mark Meadows and interviewed her about her election-related activities, but the public portions of the Committee’s work focused primarily on Trump and his immediate associates rather than broader conservative movement infrastructure.

Ginni Thomas’s January 6 rally attendance exemplified how conservative movement coordination infrastructure—particularly the Council for National Policy—connected institutional leaders, donors, political operatives, and even Supreme Court spouses in coordinated efforts to advance movement priorities. Thomas’s position on CNP Action’s board gave her a formal leadership role in an organization that coordinated conservative response to Biden’s victory. Her rally attendance on January 6 demonstrated her personal commitment to that coordinated effort, even as it evolved into violent insurrection.

The incident also highlighted the Thomas family’s unprecedented integration into conservative movement infrastructure and the conflicts of interest this created for judicial independence. While Clarence Thomas ruled on cases involving conservative movement organizations and priorities, his wife served on the board of CNP Action, received payments from Leonard Leo’s dark money network, attended rallies organized by conservative groups, and advocated for positions that might generate Supreme Court cases. The system of coordination that connected Heritage Foundation, ALEC, the Federalist Society, CNP, and conservative donors extended even to the spouse of a Supreme Court justice—suggesting that the conservative capture of the judiciary included not just the selection of ideologically aligned judges but the integration of judicial families into movement coordination networks.