Did Ginni Thomas advocate an ‘insurrection’ or ‘coup’?

Authored by washingtonpost.com and submitted by mafco
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— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in remarks to reporters, March 31

After an account of these comments appeared in The Washington Post, a reader requested a fact check. He said his reading of the texts by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, were “far-fetched” but did not support the statements by Klobuchar and Pelosi that Thomas advocated an “insurrection” or a “coup.” The lawmakers made those remarks in calling on Justice Thomas to recuse himself from hearing cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

This is an interesting request, so we decided to dig in and see what we discovered.

Ginni Thomas is a prominent conservative activist. As Bob Woodward and Robert Costa first reported in The Post, she repeatedly pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in increasingly hyperbolic texts, to pursue unrelenting efforts to support President Donald Trump’s claims that he lost the 2020 election through fraud.

Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by his supporters, who were seeking to halt the official counting of electoral college votes after Vice President Mike Pence refused to block the counting of some votes as Trump had urged.

There is no question that the texts — 29 were supplied by Meadows to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack — show that Thomas believed in and touted a series of Four Pinocchio claims about alleged election fraud.

We relied on an extensive list of the exchanges compiled by the Boston Globe. Here are some selected highlights:

“Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states.”

This text uses terms — “watermarked ballots” and “white hats” — popular with believers in the QAnon extremist ideology. “White hats” refers to military and government officials allied with QAnon, while adherents also believed Trump had watermarked mail-in ballots so he could track potential fraud.

“Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”

More QAnon craziness — a belief that liberals were the subject of mass arrests and shipped to Guantánamo Bay for military tribunals.

“The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”

As regular readers of The Fact Checker know, there was no heist. No evidence of widespread election fraud was ever provided, let alone enough to change the result of the election. Joe Biden won the popular vote by 7 million votes, or 4.5 percentage points — the second-biggest margin since 2000. He also decisively won the electoral college, which determines the victor.

Moreover, although Trump lost, Republicans overall did well across the country, narrowing the Democratic advantage in the House. Trump supporters have never explained how votes could only be altered in the presidential race.

“Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am. Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved.”

“Don’t let her and your assets be marginalized instead … help her be the lead and the face.”

Thomas pushes the views of Trump attorney Sidney Powell, whose conspiracy theories were considered so outrageous that her attorneys later said, as part of a defense against a libel lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems: “No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.”

“Mark (don’t want to wake you) … “Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”

More Sidney Powell agitprop. ‘The Kraken” was a giant sea monster in the 1981 film “Clash of the Titans.” Somehow it was embraced by Trump followers to mean evidence of a vast election conspiracy.

The texts provided to the committee pause after Nov. 24, except for one sent from Thomas to Meadows on Jan. 10.

“We are living through what feels like the end of America. Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in listening mode to see where to fight with our teams. Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!!”

There are two notable lines in this text, which could either support or negate the notion that she supported a coup.

First, note that she appears to condemn the attack on the Capitol, saying these people were not representative of Trump supporters. In advance of The Post report, Thomas had told the Washington Free Beacon that she attended Trump’s Jan. 6 rally, where he urged supporters to march to the Capitol, but that she had left early because she was cold.

That line would indicate she did not support the attack.

But her other comment — expressing disgust for Pence — demonstrates that she supported the extreme remedy advocated by Trump to deny Biden the election. The apparent strategy was for enough states to decertify their results so Biden could not have a majority in the electoral college, forcing the election to be placed in the hands of the House — where each state would get one vote. Republicans controlled a slim majority of state delegations (26 to 24) to ensure a victory for Trump.

Pence determined that he did not have “unilateral authority” under the Constitution to determine that some electoral votes should not be counted. He concluded, after consultation with legal experts, that he only had a ceremonial role as president of the Senate. Trump lashed out on Twitter, saying it was “a time for extreme courage” and urged Pence to overturn the results. Some of the attackers had sought Pence in the Capitol, believing him to be a traitor.

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, pointed to that line to say that Pelosi’s reference to a “coup” is supported in the texts. “This is quite simple. The speaker is not saying she was on the grounds on Jan. 6,” he said. “She wanted the vice president to overturn the result of the election” — which, he said, is a coup.

That may be debatable, but by a dictionary definition, a coup does not always have to involve violent acts. Coup d’etat is not mentioned in the U.S. code, but advocating the overthrow of government generally involves force, violence or assassination of any government officer.

Insurrection is mentioned in the U.S. code and so seems to present a higher bar. “It is charged by federal prosecutors far more rarely [than sedition or treason] — almost never in American history,” the Marshall Project said in a guide to the language. “It means, essentially, to incite, assist in or engage in a full-on rebellion against the government: a step beyond just conspiring against it, and requiring that significant violence be involved.”

We sought comment from Klobuchar’s staff and did not receive one before deadline.

Of the two quotes, Pelosi is on slightly stronger ground. A coup often involves military force, but it can also be defined as an illegal change in government. Few legal scholars supported Trump’s interpretation of Pence’s role. If Pence had acted to block the vote, he would have been challenged. Pelosi might have halted the joint session of Congress before such a vote could take place, resulting in a constitutional crisis. “Contributor to” is also weaker language than “advocated for.”

We will leave Pelosi’s comment unrated. Readers can make their own judgment about whether it is appropriate.

“Insurrection” is virtually always defined as a violent uprising against a government. Thomas may have wanted to overturn the results of the election, but her texts do not back the idea that she supported the violent tactics by the people who assaulted the Capitol. The texts are filled with falsehoods, but it’s not as clear, as Klobuchar says, that Thomas supported an insurrection. Klobuchar earns Two Pinocchios.

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WordleMaven on April 5th, 2022 at 15:22 UTC »

Ginni Thomas is a treasonous insurrectionist and that’s not a claim but a fact.

segvcore on April 5th, 2022 at 14:00 UTC »

No need to say "claims" WaPo (Glenn Kessler) - how about ...

Senator Klobuchar points out Ginni Thomas' part in conspiracy to commit an insurrection.

https://archive.ph/zGobU

Personally, I award Senator Klobuchar Zero Pinocchios.

N0IW0ntBackD0wn on April 5th, 2022 at 13:57 UTC »

I would not say that someone is merely making a claim when they are making a statement that has already been shown to be completely truthful.