Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with Jan. 6 panel

Conservative activist Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has agreed to participate in a voluntary interview with a House panel investigating the Jan. 6 uprising, her lawyers said Wednesday.

Attorney Mark Pauletta said Thomas “is eager to answer the committee’s questions to clarify any misunderstandings about her work related to the 2020 election.”

The committee has sought an interview with Thomas to learn more about her role in an unsuccessful attempt to help former President Donald Trump oust him. In the weeks after the election and before the riots, she texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and reached out to lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin.

Thomas’ willingness to testify comes as the committee prepares to complete its work by the end of the year and is writing a final report on its findings into the U.S. Capitol riots. The panel announced Wednesday that it will reconvene on Sept. 28 in what could be the last in a series of hearings that began this summer.

Thomas’ testimony – known as Ginni – is one of the group’s remaining projects as it looks at getting its work done. The team has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and presented some video testimony during eight hearings over the summer.

The extent of Thomas’ involvement prior to the Capitol attack is unclear. She said in an interview that she attended the initial pro-Trump rally on the morning of Jan. 6, but left before Trump spoke and the crowd headed to the Capitol.

Thomas, a longtime Trump supporter active in conservative causes, has repeatedly maintained that her political activism has no conflict of interest with her husband’s work. When the Supreme Court ruled in January to allow congressional committees to access presidential diaries, visitor logs, speeches and handwritten notes related to the events of January 6, Justice Thomas was the only dissenting voice.

It is unclear whether next week’s hearing will provide a general overview of what the panel has learned, or whether it will focus on new information and evidence, such as any provided by Thomas. The committee held several interviews with Trump’s cabinet secretaries in late July and August, some of whom had discussed invoking constitutional process in the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office after the uprising.

The committee’s Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, told a panel’s most recent hearing in July that the committee “has more evidence to share with the American people and more evidence to gather.”