By SCOTT BAUER
MADISON, Wis. — The spouse of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas contacted no less than two Wisconsin state lawmakers, together with the chair of the Senate elections committee, urging them to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win within the tightly contested state, emails obtained Thursday by The Associated Press present.
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist, additionally had despatched messages to greater than two dozen lawmakers in Arizona.
In her communications with lawmakers in each states, Thomas urged Republicans to decide on their very own slate of electors after the election, arguing that outcomes giving Biden a victory within the states had been marred by fraud. Despite quite a few evaluations, lawsuits and recounts , no widespread fraud calling into query the outcomes has been found in both state.
The emails obtained at the very same time on Nov. 9, 2020, by Wisconsin state Sen. Kathy Bernier and state Rep. Gary Tauchen had been first reported Thursday by The Washington Post. The AP obtained the e-mail from Bernier, and the watchdog group Documented posted the e-mail Tauchen obtained.
The emails had been despatched at virtually the very same time as those Thomas despatched to lawmakers in Arizona.
Thomas didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark, made to the court docket Thursday.
Bernier, in a phone interview with the AP, stated she didn’t recall receiving the e-mail from Thomas, which was certainly one of 1000’s her workplace and different Wisconsin lawmakers obtained round that point. The message was despatched over the FreeRoots platform that permits for mass mailing of prewritten emails. Bernier stated she had no contact with Thomas apart from receiving the e-mail.
“Please stand strong in the face of political and media pressure,” Thomas wrote within the emails obtained by the Wisconsin lawmakers. “Please reflect on the awesome authority granted to you by our Constitution. And then please take action to ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen for our state.”
Bernier stated Thursday that she didn’t fault Thomas for sending the message, which she doesn’t recall studying on the time.
“Ginni is not a constituent, so therefore not top priority to respond to,” Bernier stated. “And so I am sure we did not respond to her.”
Bernier, who has been outspoken in saying there was no widespread voter fraud in Wisconsin’s election that Biden pretty gained, stated she had no challenge with Thomas contacting her concerning the election.
“I don’t believe this is hair raising crazy stuff that everybody’s making it out to be,” she stated of the Thomas e-mail. “There were a lot of Republicans at the time that thought there was massive voter fraud. … I’m sure she would have preferred taking it back, especially after all of the evidence.”
Tauchen declined remark by a spokesperson.
Clarence Thomas was the one member of the Supreme Court who voted in opposition to the court docket’s order permitting the U.S. House committee investigating the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, to acquire Trump data that had been held by the National Archives and Records Administration. The court docket voted in January to permit the committee to get the paperwork.
Ginni Thomas’s position within the plot to overturn the 2020 election gained by Biden is being checked out by members of the House committee investigating the riot. The committee requested her in June to sit down for an interview.
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Associated Press author Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.
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For full protection of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege
Source: www.bostonherald.com”