Photograph by Paul Morigi/Getty Images32 2.27.22
‘‘Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?’’
Shared in the days after the 2020 presidential
election, it urged the members of an infl uential
if secretive right-wing group to contact legisla-
tors in three of the swing states that tipped the
balance for Joe Biden — Arizona, Georgia and
Pennsylvania. The aim was audacious: Keep Pres-
ident Donald J. Trump in power.
The group, the Council for National Policy,
brings together old-school Republican luminar-
ies, Christian conservatives, Tea Party activists
and MAGA operatives, with more than 400 mem-
bers who include leaders of organizations like
the Federalist Society, the National Rifl e Associ-
ation and the Family Research Council. Found-
ed in 1981 as a counterweight to liberalism, the
group was hailed by President Ronald Reagan as
seeking the ‘‘return of righteousness, justice and
truth’’ to America.
As Trump insisted, without evidence, that
fraud had cheated him of victory, conservative
groups rushed to rally behind him. The council
stood out, however, not only because of its ped-
igree but also because one of its newest leaders
was Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clar-
ence Thomas and a longtime activist in right-
wing circles. She had taken on a prominent
role at the council during the Trump years and
by 2019 had joined the nine- member board of
C.N.P. Action, an arm of the council organized as
a 501(c)4 under a provision of the tax code that
allows for direct political advocacy. It was C.N.P.
Action that circulated the November ‘‘action
steps’’ document, the existence of which has not
been previously reported. It instructed mem-
bers to pressure Republican lawmakers into
challenging the election results and appointing
alternate slates of electors: ‘‘Demand that they
not abandon their Constitutional responsibili-
ties during a time such as this.’’
Such a plan, if carried out successfully, would
have almost certainly landed before the Supreme
Court — and Ginni Thomas’s husband. In fact,
Trump was already calling for that to happen. In a
Dec. 2 speech at the White House, the president
falsely claimed that ‘‘millions of votes were cast ille-
gally in swing states alone’’ and said he hoped ‘‘the
Supreme Court of the United States will see it’’ and
‘‘will do what’s right for our country, because our
country cannot live with this kind of an election.’’
The Thomases have long posed a unique
quandary in Washington. Because Supreme
Court justices do not want to be perceived as
partisan, they tend to avoid political events and
entanglements, and their spouses often keep
low profi les. But the Thomases have defi ed
such norms. Since the founding of the nation,
no spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice
has been as overt a political activist as Ginni
Thomas. In addition to her perch at the Council
for National Policy, she founded a group called
Ground swell with the support of Stephen K.
Bannon, the hard-line nationalist and former
Trump adviser. It holds a weekly meeting of
infl uential conservatives, many of whom work
directly on issues that have come before the
court.
Ginni Thomas insists, in her council biogra-
phy, that she and her husband operate in ‘‘sep-
arate professional lanes,’’ but those lanes in fact
merge with notable frequency. For the three
decades he has sat on the Supreme Court, they
have worked in tandem from the bench and the
political trenches to take aim at targets like Roe
v. Wade and affi rmative action. Together they
believe that ‘‘America is in a vicious battle for its
founding principles,’’ as Ginni Thomas has put
it. Her views, once seen as on the fringe, have
come to dominate the Republican Party. And
with Trump’s three appointments reshaping the
Supreme Court, her husband fi nds himself at the
center of a new conservative majority poised to
shake the foundations of settled law. In a nation
freighted with division and upheaval, the Thom-
ases have found their moment.
This article draws on hours of recordings
and internal documents from groups affi liated
with the Thomases; dozens of interviews with
the Thomases’ classmates, friends, colleagues
and critics, as well as more than a dozen Trump
White House aides and supporters and some of
Justice Thomas’s former clerks; and an archive
of Council for National Policy videos and internal
documents provided by an academic researcher
in Australia, Brent Allpress.
The reporting uncovered new details on the
Thomases’ ascent: how Trump courted Justice
Thomas; how Ginni Thomas used that courtship
to gain access to the Oval Offi ce, where her insis-
tent policy and personnel suggestions so aggravat-
ed aides that one called her a ‘‘wrecking ball’’ while
others put together an opposition- research- style
report on her that was obtained by The Times;
and the extent to which Justice Thomas fl outed
judicial- ethics guidance by participating in events
hosted by conservative organizations with matters
before the court. Those organizations showered
the couple with accolades and, in at least one case,
used their appearances to attract event fees, dona-
tions and new members.
New reporting also shows just how blurredthe lines between the couple’s interests became
during the eff ort to overturn the 2020 election,
which culminated in the rally held at the Ellipse,
just outside the White House grounds, aimed
at stopping Congress from certifying the state
votes that gave Joe Biden his victory. Many of
the rally organizers and those advising Trump
had connections to the Thomases, but little has
been known about what role, if any, Ginni Thom-
as played, beyond the fact that on the morning
of the March to Save America, as the rally was
called, she urged her Facebook followers to watch
how the day unfolded. ‘‘LOVE MAGA people!!!!’’
she posted before the march turned violent.
‘‘GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP
or PRAYING!’’
But her role went deeper, and beyond C.N.P.
Action. Dustin Stockton, an organizer who
worked with Women for America First, which
held the permit for the Ellipse rally, said he
was told that Ginni Thomas played a peace-
making role between feuding factions of rally
organizers ‘‘so that there wouldn’t be any divi-
sion around January 6.’’
‘‘The way it was presented to me was that
Ginni was uniting these diff erent factions
around a singular mission on January 6,’’ said
Stockton, who previously worked for Bannon.
‘‘That Ginni was involved made sense — she’s
pretty neutral, and she doesn’t have a lot of
enemies in the movement.’’
Ginni Thomas, who is 65 , did not respond
to requests for comment, and Justice Thom-
as, who is 73, declined to comment through a
court spokes person. In a posting on a private
Facebook group for her high school classmates,
Ginni Thomas wrote that ‘‘a NYT reporter’’
might have ‘‘contacted you looking for stories,
etc on me. This reporter seems to have been
told to write a hit piece’’ and ‘‘has knocked on
many doors and written many emails. They
all contact me and are not responding. ’’
she wrote. ‘‘Whatever. ’’ (The message was
forwarded by one of those classmates to the
reporter in question.)
In the weeks that followed Jan. 6, as pub-
lic condemnation of the insurrection grew to
include some Republican leaders like Senator
Mitch McConnell, the Council for National
Policy circulated in its newsletter another pre-
viously unreported memo, written by one of
its members, that outlined strategies to make
the Capitol riot seem more palatable. ‘‘Drive
the narrative that it was mostly peaceful pro-
tests,’’ a leading member of the group advised,
according to a copy reviewed by The Times.
‘‘Amplify the concerns of the protestors and
give them legitimacy.’’
In the year since the insurrection, a number
of friends and allies of the Thomases, and even a
former Thomas clerk, have received subpoenasTHE CALL
TO ACTION
WA S T I T L E D