frontliners for TrumP
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SEE GINNI 5
MERRI OK
see coleman
see eastman
see ginni4
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an 1 24
north Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a far-right MAGA Republican and election denier known for his anti-gay, anti-transgender and anti-Muslim views, appears to be the frontrunner in North Carolina's 2024 GOP gubernatorial primary.
Robinson has never backed down from the Big Lie, maintaining that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump — a false claim that has been repeatedly debunked. And he has been unwavering in his devotion to Trump on the campaign trail.
In an article published on January 11, the Daily Beast's Sam Brodey describes newly obtained documents that "shed light on the extent of his private ties to the movement to contest, overturn, and delegitimize Donald Trump's defeat in the 2020 election."
The "zealous election denier," according to Brodey, met with far-right GOP activist Ginni Thomas — a major election denier who is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — "weeks after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and Biden's inauguration."
"According to a copy of Robinson's official schedule, which was produced through a Freedom of Information Act request, the lieutenant governor had a meeting with (Ginni) Thomas on March 30, 2021," Brodey explains. "But Robinson didn't just speak with Thomas that afternoon; the calendar note indicates he met with Thomas and a group she helped run called Frontliners for Liberty.
Initially a Facebook group that described itself as 'a new collaborative, liberty-focused, action-oriented group of state leaders representing grassroots armies,' according to CNBC, Frontliners for Liberty morphed into a key organizing venue for far-right activists nationwide working desperately to keep Trump in power — even after Trump was out of office."}:
Brodey adds, "Ultimately, Thomas' group was influential enough for it to draw the scrutiny of the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6. "
The Daily Beast reporter notes that although it's "unclear exactly what Robinson and (Ginni) Thomas discussed in their March 2021 meeting," Robinson has "continued to cast doubt on the election through his rhetoric."
READ MORE:'Start reading some of those quotes': Republican defends Hitler’s and Stalin's writings
"As recently as December 2023," Brodey observes, "Robinson was also downplaying the violent attack on the Capitol, telling a local GOP club that it was 'this minor little thing,' according to audio of the remarks obtained by The Daily Beast…. As Robinson asks voters for the power to lead one of the country's perennial battleground states, the news of his 2021 meeting with Thomas and the Frontliners adds to his record undermining an election many Republicans accept they lost and hope to leave behind."
When he defeated Democratic Yvonne Lewis Holley in North Carolina's lieutenant governor's race in 2020, Robinson became the first African-American to win that position in his state. Robinson, however, has been a very polarizing figure in North Carolina politics, often drawing criticism from both Democrats and Never Trump conservatives for the many inflammatory statements he has made.
The North Carolina Democratic Party has described Robinson as "homophobic, anti-Semitic, and downright unhinged."
"Predictably," Brodey observes, "Robinson's campaign for the North Carolina governorship has made the state's GOP establishment uneasy and delighted the MAGA base."
READ MORE:North Carolina Republicans aren't only anti-freedom but they’re openly racist as well
*Read The Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/north-carolina-guv-frontrunner-mark-robinson-had-secret-meeting-with-ginni-thomas-after-jan-6?ref=home?ref=home}:
Publicly, the Trump-loving lieutenant governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, has embraced the role of a zealous 2020 election denier.
In April 2021, for instance, Robinson told a crowd that President Joe Biden “stole the election.”
“Yeah, I said that,” Robinson added for effect.
Days before making that declaration, however, Robinson was privately meeting with one of the highest-profile election deniers in the country: Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Now, as Robinson ramps up his campaign for North Carolina’s governorship in 2024, documents obtained by The Daily Beast shed light on the extent of his private ties to the movement to contest, overturn, and delegitimize Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election—and it’s clear Robinson is an unabashed, unapologetic election denier running in the same circles as other Republicans showing no repentance for stirring up an insurrection.
In fact, Robinson met with Thomas weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and Biden’s inauguration.
According to a copy of Robinson’s official schedule, which was produced through a Freedom of Information Act request, the lieutenant governor had a meeting with Thomas on March 30, 2021.
But Robinson didn’t just speak with Thomas that afternoon; the calendar note indicates he met with Thomas and a group she helped run called Frontliners for Liberty.
Initially a Facebook group that described itself as “a new collaborative, liberty-focused, action-oriented group of state leaders representing grassroots armies,” according to CNBC, Frontliners for Liberty morphed into a key organizing venue for far-right activists nationwide working desperately to keep Trump in power—even after Trump was out of office.
Ultimately, Thomas’ group was influential enough for it to draw the scrutiny of the House Select Committee to Investigate Jan. 6. In December 2020, Trump attorney John Eastman spoke to the group, at Thomas’ invitation, to update them regarding his legal challenges to Biden’s victory. A court-obtained meeting agenda shows Eastman was slated to discuss “state legislative actions that can reverse the media-called election for Joe Biden.”
It’s unclear exactly what Robinson and Thomas discussed in their March 2021 meeting—or exactly who else joined. Since there was no location specified on Robinson’s schedule for the meeting, it may have taken place virtually. Spokespeople for Robinson and Thomas both did not return requests for comment from The Daily Beast.
Even after Biden was inaugurated and the MAGA legal challenges deflated, Thomas and allied far-right activists in her Frontliners group continued to work to undermine the election outcome, according to a *Washington Post*report—important context for her meeting with Robinson.
Robinson also continued to cast doubt on the election through his rhetoric, if not in any formal government action. (Trump narrowly beat Biden in North Carolina in 2020.) In addition to his April 2021 comments, Robinson[] VID ] (https://youtu.be/NkdLquU8xVU) at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference to claim that Biden didn’t win the election.
Mark Robinson, lieutenant governor of North Carolina arrives at a rally for U.S. Senate nominee Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC).
At the gathering, Robinson told activists that 83 million people couldn’t have possibly voted for Biden. “I don’t think 83 million people know who Joe Biden is,” he said. “Joe Biden doesn’t know who Joe Biden is.”
As recently as December 2023, Robinson was also downplaying the violent attack on the Capitol, telling a local GOP club that it was “this minor little thing,” according to audio of the remarks obtained by The Daily Beast.
Robinson’s Trumpian instinct of pushing boundaries in his speech, and reveling in his fans’ acclaim afterward, has been a major factor behind his meteoric rise in North Carolina politics. In 2020, Robinson won the state’s lieutenant governorship with no prior political experience, and he first gained notoriety on the right in 2018, after a pro-gun speech at a Greensboro city council meeting went viral.
Now, Robinson appears to be the GOP favorite to take on Democratic candidate Josh Stein, even though Robinson may be—or potentially because—he’s positioned himself as the most extreme Republican in the field.
As Robinson asks voters for the power to lead one of the country’s perennial battleground states, the news of his 2021 meeting with Thomas and the Frontliners adds to his record undermining an election many Republicans accept they lost and hope to leave behind.
Predictably, Robinson’s campaign for the North Carolina governorship has made the state’s GOP establishment uneasy and delighted the MAGA base. Trump has said he plans to endorse Robinson in the Republican primary. In fact, at a fundraiser he hosted for Robinson in December, the ex-president declared his ally was “better” than Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the GOP primary, Robinson faces businessman Bill Graham, who has won the endorsement of Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC). If he were to win the primary, Robinson would likely face Attorney General Josh Stein in November. North Carolina is poised to host the most competitive governor race of 2024, with incumbent Gov. Roy Cooper (D) term-limited from running again.
The lieutenant governor’s strident election denialism is just one reason why many operatives—in both parties—believe he could prove toxic in a general election matchup. Few major statewide politicians have amassed a rhetorical record as incendiary and broadly offensive as Robinson.
On his very active Facebook page and elsewhere over the years, Robinson has made a range of comments disparaging Jews, LGBTQ people, Muslims, and women. The deeply homophobic politician has claimed that God “formed” him to fight against LGBTQ rights and has called LGBTQ people “filth.”
In 2018, Robinson said the comic book character Black Panther was created by an “agnostic Jew” to “pull the shekels out of your schvartze pockets”—respectively referring to the Israeli currency and a Yiddish slur for Black people.
In 2020, Robinson conducted an interview with the fringe militant pastor Sean Moon, and expressed his agreement at Moon’s articulation of the conspiracy theory that a cabal of Jewish bankers controls the world. Both debacles earned Robinson the rebuke of Jewish groups, including the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Previously, Robinson also accused Ellen DeGeneres of being a “top-ranking demon,” blamed Bill Cosby’s conviction on sexual assault charges on the Illuminati, mocked the teenage survivors of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, and made fun of Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, after he survived a violent attack at his home.
Robinson has essentially never apologized for any of his controversial past statements. He did allow that his remarks on Jews and the Black Panther were poorly phrased, but he has vehemently denied any suggestion they were antisemitic.
In some respects, Robinson has cranked up the volume on his rhetoric since launching his campaign for governor—particularly when it comes to the 2020 election and Jan. 6.
In addition to his comments calling Jan. 6 a “minor little thing,” he has vociferously defended Trump’s efforts to undemocratically remain in power. In a December interview on Newsmax, Robinson said efforts to hold Trump accountable were “despicable.” The former president who was impeached for inciting the violence at the Capitol, Robinson said, “did absolutely nothing wrong, in fact, did everything right for the country.”
Adulation for Trump is one quality that Robinson shares with Thomas, who became an integral figure in the sprawling efforts to keep the former president in office.
A well-known right-wing activist married to an icon of the conservative legal movement, Thomas seemed to descend further into a fever swamp of fringe conspiracies before and after the 2020 presidential election.
The Jan. 6 committee obtained texts sent between Thomas and her friend Mark Meadows, then Trump’s chief of staff, which showed her expressing hope in online predictions that the Bidens, election officials, and journalists would be sent to Guantanamo Bay. She also urged Meadows to do more to support Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud to keep him in office.
Not a great deal is known about Thomas’ Frontliners for Liberty group, other than the fact that it began on Facebook and that Thomas was the administrator of the group page. According to CNBC, it had at least 50 members who Thomas described as “grassroots state leaders.”
On March 6, 2021, Thomas and the Frontliners hosted conservative pundit C.L. Bryant for a speech.
“There is a robbery that is going on in this country right now,” Bryant said, according to The Washington Post. “In fact, I say it to you and I’ll say it loud and clear, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I won’t bite my tongue. I do believe that Donald John Trump is the only legitimate president.”
Three weeks later, Thomas and her group had their meeting with Robinson.
# Sam BrodeyDeputy Politics Editor
@sambrodeySam.Brodey@thedailybeast.com
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https://thenewsblaze.com/ginni-thomas-tied-facebook-group-frontliners-for-liberty-could-be-a-new-focus-in-jan-6-investigation/
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Ginni Thomas-Tied Facebook Group ‘FrontLiners For Liberty’ Could Be A New Focus In Jan. 6 Investigation
By Anas Siddiqui On Jun 18, 2022
(L-R) Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife and conservative activist Virginia Thomas arrive at the Heritage Foundation on October 21, 2021 in Washington, DC.
A Facebook group that appears to be run by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, could become a new point of interest in the U.S. House Select Committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Congressional investigators said they planned to ask Ginni Thomas to testify before the committee hours after Trump attorney John Eastman on Thursday publicly posted a Dec. 4, 2020 email from Thomas asking him to speak to a gathering she called “Frontliners,” which she described as featuring “grassroots state leaders.” Ginni Thomas is listed as an administrator of a Facebook group that goes by a similar name and description: “FrontLiners for Liberty.”
The private group, which listed more than 50 members, was created in August 2020, just two months before the November elections, according to the page’s description.
The group, which CNBC reviewed before it was removed from public view, described itself as “a new collaborative, liberty-focused, action-oriented group of state leaders representing grassroots armies to CONNECT, INFORM and ACTIVATE each other weekly to preserve constitutional governance.” Although Thomas’ personal Facebook page isn’t verified, it contained numerous photos of Justice Thomas.
The group’s pages were removed from public view after CNBC reached out to Thomas about the organization. It now shows a notice from Facebook saying that it’s either been deleted or the privacy settings have been changed.
CNBC also tried to get answers through Facebook messenger to Stephanie Coleman, who is also listed administrator of the group and the wife of the late Gregory Coleman who was Texas’ solicitor general. Greg Coleman was once a clerk for Justice Thomas.
Coleman and Thomas are repeatedly pictured together on Coleman’s personal Facebook page, including a photo of the two together in December 2016 with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Thomas asked Eastman to speak to her Frontliners group on Dec. 8, according to her email to him. Eastman said Thomas “invited me to give an update about election litigation to a group she met with periodically,” according to his post on Substack, an email newsletter subscription service. Thomas told Eastman she was “on sabbatical until this election stuff is resolved.”
At the time, Trump and his allies were filing legal challenges against the 2020 election results after President Joe Biden was declared the winner. Trump and those close to him lost most of those lawsuits.
Thomas’ email to Eastman appears to be at issue in his legal dispute with congressional investigators looking into the Jan. 6 attack. A federal judge recently ruled against Eastman, who was trying to assert attorney-client privilege to withhold emails about the 2020 election. The judge ordered Eastman to turn over ten documents, including four that pertained to a meeting on Dec. 8, 2020, which was the same date Ginni Thomas asked him to speak to Frontliners. “Two emails are the group’s high-profile leader inviting Dr. Eastman to speak at the meeting, and two contain the meeting’s agenda,” U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote in his June. 7 order.
Based on the event’s agenda, Eastman discussed “‘State legislative actions that can reverse the media-called election for Joe Biden.’ Another speaker gave an ‘update on [state] legislature actions regarding electoral votes,'” Carter wrote.
Eastman, according to the Jan. 6 House select committee investigating the riot that took place about 17 months ago, tried to convince former Vice President Mike Pence that he held virtually unilateral power to overturn the election. Yet, according to Pence’s former counsel who testified at a Thursday Jan. 6 committee hearing, Eastman once told him that the Trump advisor’s own legal theory would be rejected 9-0 if it went before the Supreme Court.
The select committee said it plans to invite Ginni Thomas to testify about her correspondence with Eastman. Thomas told The Daily Caller that she was willing to testify. “I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them,” Thomas said. She reportedly supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sending text messages to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows that encouraged him to stand behind the then president’s false election claims.
A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, a spokesman for the Jan. 6 House select committee, Thomas, Eastman and his attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
The Frontliners group also worked with a conservative advocacy organization known as FreedomWorks, according to the nonprofit’s spokesman Peter Vicenzi. He also said that Thomas and FreedomWorks activists have been allies for years. FreedomWorks does not publicly disclose their donors.
“Frontliners for Liberty, it is yet another conservative grassroots organization that FreedomWorks partners with to advance our issue set,” Vicenzi said in an email. “Ginni Thomas, for years, has been an invaluable ally to our activist community when it comes to engaging on shared issues.”
Since Trump lost the election, FreedomWorks has pushed the idea that there needs to be election reforms. Conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who used to work with Trump’s campaign, now chairs FreedomWorks’ multimillion dollar National Election Protection Initiative, according to Newsmax.
Merissa Hamilton, who says on her LinkedIn page that she’s a grassroots director at FreedomWorks, tweeted out in October a picture at what she described as an event at “FreedomWorks Frontliners for Liberty.” The picture showed Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Louie Gohmert, R-Texas and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. attending the event.
After CNBC emailed Hamilton about the tweets, they were deleted off her page. She did not return follow up requests for comment.
Read original article here
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https://darik.news/oklahoma/president-at-ginny-thomas-group-meeting-calls-bidens-victory-illegitimate-long-after-january-6-video-show/618779.html
president at Ginny Thomas group meeting calls Biden’s victory illegitimate long after January 6, video show
June 20, 2022
no lnx
Two months after rioters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to help President Donald Trump stay in office, Virginia “Ginny” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, attended a gathering of right-wing activists where A speaker declared to applause. Video recordings of the incident showed Trump was still the “legitimate president”.
According to a video posted on Facebook by an attendee, clergyman and conservative radio personality CL Bryant told the crowd, “There’s a robbery going on in this country right now.” “Indeed, I say it to you and I will say it loud and clear, and I am not ashamed to say it. I will not bite my tongue. I believe that Donald John Trump is the only legitimate president.”
The March 6, 2021 event was a meeting of Frontliners for Liberty. The group gained national attention from obscurity last week, with the revelation that Thomas had invited pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman to speak to its members in December 2020.
The revelation stemming from the email, that a judge ordered Eastman to be handed over to the House committee investigating the January 6 uprising, showed that Thomas was in contact with Eastman, a key legal architect of the effort to reverse the election. Judge David O’Carter of the Central District of California wrote in a June 7 opinion that the emails, in which the group’s “high-profile leader” had invited Eastman to speak — were relevant to the committee’s work.
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While it has been revealed in recent weeks that Thomas was involved in those efforts before January 6, his appearance at the Orlando gathering indicates that his alliance with election deniers continued even after Joe Biden’s inauguration. According to social media posts, court filings and interviews with several people involved in the group, the frontliners have hosted hard-right lawmakers, insisted on strict secrecy and declared that the country’s top enemy is the “radical fascist leftist”.
[A photo from the Orlando event shows Bryant posing with Thomas. Others showed Thomas wearing a name tag decorated with a yellow ribbon and others called the “Trouble Maker”.
Thomas did not respond to messages seeking comment. Bryant also did not respond to a request for comment.
Thomas’ role in Frontliners was confirmed on Thursday, when Eastman published an email inviting him to speak to the group on December 8, 2020. The email was one of several Eastman sought shields belonging to the group, which was not identified. in court filings. Eastman argued that releasing them to committee would violate the participants’ First Amendment rights.
The group said it was understood as a “cone of silence”, which Eastman wrote in a May filing. He quoted an email received from the group as saying, “[W]We are careful about who is on the phone and who is in the room and we don’t leak what happens, what is said or who is in the meeting – always!”
Eastman on Thursday downplay Significance of the invitation, writing that Thomas asked her to “give updates about the election trial to the group she met from time to time.” She wrote that she did not discuss “any matter pending or likely to come to court” with Thomas or her husband.
The committee has not issued any frontliner emails. It has requested an interview with Thomas and asked him to turn over communications with a number of people, including pro-Trump lawyers, members of Congress and Justice Department staff. Thomas told the Orthodox daily caller Last week that she looked forward to meeting with the committee and “can’t wait to clear up the misunderstanding.”
Disclosures about Thomas’ activities have exposed the potential conflicts of interest that her husband faces in deciding the affairs of the 2020 election and seeks to destroy it. Clarence Thomas has not recused himself from any of those cases—including one in January in which he was the sole justice to back Trump’s request to release White House documents related to Jan. was requested to stop.
A spokesman for the Supreme Court did not respond to questions from Clarence Thomas.
Ginny Thomas has said that she keeps her work separate from her husband.
Members described Frontliners for Liberty as a loose coalition of conservative activists. According to former New Mexico lawmaker Janice Arnold-Jones and a second person familiar with the Frontliners’ operations, the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks provides group members with significant institutional support, including hosting briefings and “fly-ins” when members are in person. call from. spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the group.
FreedomWorks “partners with Frontliners” but the two are separate entities, FreedomWorks spokesman Peter Vicenzi wrote in an email to The Washington Post.
“Ginny Thomas, over the years, has been an invaluable ally to our activist community when it comes to engaging on shared issues,” wrote Vicenzi. “Thomas himself has been a staunch conservative activist and FreedomWorks is proud to work with him.”
In his email invitation to Eastman, Thomas imitated another recipient, saying that the person – whose name was modified – was assisting with the meeting because “until this election material is resolved, I will I’m on rest.” It is not clear how his role on the sabbatical was different from his earlier role.
Arnold-Jones told The Post that Thomas was not the group’s sole leader. “It extends much more than that,” she said in an interview. “She’s part of it. Sometimes, we see Ginny.”
Arnold-Jones said the group maintains strict secrecy, “so that people can say what they have to say.” She said the group serves an important networking function, connecting state activists with parliamentarians and other decision-makers. But such details are shared with care, she said. “When information is shared, they don’t send a big old letter that says, ‘Here’s their phone number.’ ,
Frontliners for Liberty does not have a web presence except for a private Facebook group of about 50 people, which was founded in August 2020 and administered by Ginny Thomas and Stephanie Miller Coleman, the head of one of Clarence Thomas’ former clerks. was a widow. Coleman did not respond to a request for comment.
The post sparked public-facing details of the Facebook group last week. It has since been removed from public view. The group was designated as “a new collaborative, independence-focused, action-oriented group of state leaders representing ground forces to engage, inform and activate each other weekly to preserve constitutional rule”. was described in.
The banner at the top of the page read: “America’s Enemy … is the Radical Fascist Left.”
Coleman’s personal Facebook page features Trump’s former White House strategist, Stephen K., along with Ginny and Clarence Thomas and other high-profile Washington celebrities. There were pictures of him including Bannon. In a 2015 photo, Coleman poses with Ginny Thomas, who is wearing a pin that reads “I .” [heart] My Husband” and a name tag that identifies the event they were attending as the “Thomas Clerk World Retreat”.
Clarence Thomas’ former clerk communicates on an email list known as Thomas Clerk World, The Post previously did. informed of, In the weeks following the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Ginny Thomas apologized to those in the email list for a rift that developed between her pro-Trump advocacy and her support for her January 6 rally. Eastman is Thomas’s former clerk.
Since The Post saw photos of Coleman last week, it has made most of his Facebook page private.
During his speech at the March gathering in Orlando, Bryant said the nation is embroiled in a “spiritual war” and urged attendees to “stand up and defend this republic.” He denounced changing definitions of marriage, family, and gender, and he repeatedly returned to the belief that the presidency had been stolen.
“It was a theft, I’ll tell you. It was the biggest theft America has ever seen. But still we sit here in the White House with a guy who’s there by deceit,” Bryant said. “My friends, you shouldn’t be afraid to say it. You shouldn’t be afraid to say it.”
Bryant urged the crowd to act, asking: “What are you ready to do?” He continued: “I believe Ginni asked this question. Are we just going to get out of here on the road, go about our business? …when you leave here tonight, what are you ready to do?”
It is not clear whether he was referring to Ginny Thomas. In pictures from the event, she is speaking with a microphone at an outdoor gathering.
The video was posted to the Facebook account of John de Lemme, a podcast host and founder of the Conservative Business Journal.
Di Lemme told The Post that he is not associated with the Frontliners, but heard Bryant’s speech when he and his wife went to lunch and dinner with a friend who was attending the meeting.
Attendees at the Orlando gathering included a wide range of employees from the grass-roots organizer to FreedomWorks employees who later blamed senior economist Stephen Moore for illegally demonstrating at the Capitol during the January 6 riots, which Trump called a Tapped for seat. Federal Reserve Board but withdrawn from thought After bipartisan criticism of his comments about women.
Other attendees included former state lawmakers, political candidates and conservative activists such as Ron Armstrong, a Michigan businessman who rose to national prominence for leading protests against Covid-19 restrictions, and Brian Kamenker, president of Massresistance, which designated as an antagonist. LGBT hate group by Southern Poverty Law Center.
Moore said that he comments at many such events and does not remember details about the group.
Armstrong told The Post that he remembered Thomas giving the welcome remarks in Orlando because he was “obviously someone who cares and would like to say hello or welcome.” He said that frontliners bring workers together on many issues and they do not have any central organizational structure. The Post did not find any corporate records for the group.
“The frontliner is nothing,” he said. “It’s all a bunch of people that gather around messages and causes and make sure we’re working together.”
Camanker did not respond to a request for comment.
Susan Voyles, a longtime conservative activist in Georgia, said she attended the March conference as president of the Georgia chapter of the Conservative Eagle Forumand saw Thomas there. Voyles said the meeting focused primarily on education issues highlighted by the pandemic.
In August, several months after the Orlando gathering, Armstrong posted a letter to state legislators from the Michigan Frontliners for Freedom group on Facebook demanding a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election. Armstrong said that the state group is different from the national collective.
According to a photo posted on Twitter, at aFrontliners event in October, Rep. Paul A.
[Shown the presence of] Gosar (R-Ariz.). Marissa Hamilton, recognized on LinkedIn as the grass-roots director of FreedomWorks, tweeted another photo the same day, apparently from the same incident. It included an image of three other Republican members of Congress who were instrumental in advancing lies about the 2020 election: Louis Gohart [gosar?] (Tex.), Marjorie Taylor Green (Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.).
“Congressman” @replouiegohmert Congress women @mtgreenee and Congress women @laurenboebert Feather @freedomworks Frontliners for Liberty,” according to one version, the tweet read reserve Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
Hamilton did not respond to a request for comment, and neither did spokespersons for Goser, Gohmert, Greene and Boebert.
Alice Crits and Amy Gardner contributed to this report.
#President #Ginny #Thomas #group #meeting #calls #Bidens #victory #illegitimate #long #January #video #show #Source #President at Ginny Thomas group meeting calls Biden’s victory illegitimate long after January 6, video show
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Frontliners for Liberty ❤️"My children's freedom is my motivator because I refuse to send them into a socialist nation." -
oct 2021 frontliners for liberty (freedomworks?]
Two months after rioters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to help President Donald Trump stay in office, Virginia “Ginny” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, attended a gathering of right-wing activists where A speaker declared to applause. Video recordings of the incident showed Trump was still the “legitimate president”.
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According to a video posted on Facebook by an attendee, clergyman and conservative radio personality CL Bryant told the crowd, “There’s a robbery going on in this country right now.” “Indeed, I say it to you and I will say it loud and clear, and I am not ashamed to say it. I will not bite my tongue. I believe that Donald John Trump is the only legitimate president.”
The March 6, 2021 event was a meeting of Frontliners for Liberty. The group gained national attention from obscurity last week, with the revelation that Thomas had invited pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman to speak to its members in December 2020.
The revelation stemming from the email, that a judge ordered Eastman to be handed over to the House committee investigating the January 6 uprising, showed that Thomas was in contact with Eastman, a key legal architect of the effort to reverse the election. Judge David O’Carter of the Central District of California wrote in a June 7 opinion that the emails, in which the group’s “high-profile leader” had invited Eastman to speak — were relevant to the committee’s work...
whereas original message And E-mailWhile it has been revealed in recent weeks that Thomas was involved in those efforts before January 6, his appearance at the Orlando gathering indicates that his alliance with election deniers continued even after Joe Biden’s inauguration. According to social media posts, court filings and interviews with several people involved in the group, the frontliners have hosted hard-right lawmakers, insisted on strict secrecy and declared that the country’s top enemy is the “radical fascist leftist”.
A photo from the Orlando event shows Bryant posing with Thomas. Others showed Thomas wearing a name tag decorated with a yellow ribbon and others called the “Trouble Maker”.
Thomas did not respond to messages seeking comment. Bryant also did not respond to a request for comment.
Thomas’ role in Frontliners was confirmed on Thursday, when Eastman published an email inviting him to speak to the group on December 8, 2020. The email was one of several Eastman sought shields belonging to the group, which was not identified. in court filings. Eastman argued that releasing them to committee would violate the participants’ First Amendment rights.
The group said it was understood as a “cone of silence”, which Eastman wrote in a May filing. He quoted an email received from the group as saying, “[W]We are careful about who is on the phone and who is in the room and we don’t leak what happens, what is said or who is in the meeting – always!”
Eastman on Thursday downplaySignificance of the invitation, writing that Thomas asked her to “give updates about the election trial to the group she met from time to time.” She wrote that she did not discuss “any matter pending or likely to come to court” with Thomas or her husband.
The committee has not issued any frontliner emails. It has requested an interview with Thomas and asked him to turn over communications with a number of people, including pro-Trump lawyers, members of Congress and Justice Department staff. Thomas told the Orthodox daily caller Last week that she looked forward to meeting with the committee and “can’t wait to clear up the misunderstanding.”
Disclosures about Thomas’ activities have exposed the potential conflicts of interest that her husband faces in deciding the affairs of the 2020 election and seeks to destroy it. Clarence Thomas has not recused himself from any of those cases—including one in January in which he was the sole justice to back Trump’s request to release White House documents related to Jan. was requested to stop.
A spokesman for the Supreme Court did not respond to questions from Clarence Thomas.
Ginny Thomas has said that she keeps her work separate from her husband.
Members described Frontliners for Liberty as a loose coalition of conservative activists. According to former New Mexico lawmaker Janice Arnold-Jones and a second person familiar with the Frontliners’ operations, the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks provides group members with significant institutional support, including hosting briefings and “fly-ins” when members are in person. call from. spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the group.
FreedomWorks “partners with Frontliners” but the two are separate entities, FreedomWorks spokesman Peter Vicenzi wrote in an email to The Washington Post.
“Ginny Thomas, over the years, has been an invaluable ally to our activist community when it comes to engaging on shared issues,” wrote Vicenzi. “Thomas himself has been a staunch conservative activist and FreedomWorks is proud to work with him.”
In his email invitation to Eastman, Thomas imitated another recipient, saying that the person – whose name was modified – was assisting with the meeting because “until this election material is resolved, I will I’m on rest.” It is not clear how his role on the sabbatical was different from his earlier role.
Arnold-Jones told The Post that Thomas was not the group’s sole leader. “It extends much more than that,” she said in an interview. “She’s part of it. Sometimes, we see Ginny.”
Arnold-Jones said the group maintains strict secrecy, “so that people can say what they have to say.” She said the group serves an important networking function, connecting state activists with parliamentarians and other decision-makers. But such details are shared with care, she said. “When information is shared, they don’t send a big old letter that says, ‘Here’s their phone number.’ ,
Frontliners for Liberty does not have a web presence except for a private Facebook group of about 50 people, which was founded in August 2020 and administered by Ginny Thomas and Stephanie Miller Coleman, the head of one of Clarence Thomas’ former clerks. was a widow. Coleman did not respond to a request for comment.
The post sparked public-facing details of the Facebook group last week. It has since been removed from public view. The group was designated as “a new collaborative, independence-focused, action-oriented group of state leaders representing ground forces to engage, inform and activate each other weekly to preserve constitutional rule”. was described in.
The banner at the top of the page read: “America’s Enemy … is the Radical Fascist Left.”
Coleman’s personal Facebook page features Trump’s former White House strategist, Stephen K., along with Ginny and Clarence Thomas and other high-profile Washington celebrities. There were pictures of him including Bannon. In a 2015 photo, Coleman poses with Ginny Thomas, who is wearing a pin that reads “I .” [heart] My Husband” and a name tag that identifies the event they were attending as the “Thomas Clerk World Retreat”.
Clarence Thomas’ former clerk communicates on an email list known as Thomas Clerk World, The Post previously did. informed of, In the weeks following the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Ginny Thomas apologized to those in the email list for a rift that developed between her pro-Trump advocacy and her support for her January 6 rally. Eastman is Thomas’s former clerk.
Since The Post saw photos of Coleman last week, it has made most of his Facebook page private.
During his speech at the March gathering in Orlando, Bryant said the nation is embroiled in a “spiritual war” and urged attendees to “stand up and defend this republic.” He denounced changing definitions of marriage, family, and gender, and he repeatedly returned to the belief that the presidency had been stolen.
“It was a theft, I’ll tell you. It was the biggest theft America has ever seen. But still we sit here in the White House with a guy who’s there by deceit,” Bryant said. “My friends, you shouldn’t be afraid to say it. You shouldn’t be afraid to say it.”
Bryant urged the crowd to act, asking: “What are you ready to do?” He continued: “I believe Ginni asked this question. Are we just going to get out of here on the road, go about our business? …when you leave here tonight, what are you ready to do?”
It is not clear whether he was referring to Ginny Thomas. In pictures from the event, she is speaking with a microphone at an outdoor gathering.
The video was posted to the Facebook account of John de Lemme, a podcast host and founder of the Conservative Business Journal.
Di Lemme told The Post that he is not associated with the Frontliners, but heard Bryant’s speech when he and his wife went to lunch and dinner with a friend who was attending the meeting.
Attendees at the Orlando gathering included a wide range of employees from the grass-roots organizer to FreedomWorks employees who later blamed senior economist Stephen Moore for illegally demonstrating at the Capitol during the January 6 riots, which Trump called a Tapped for seat. Federal Reserve Board but withdrawn from thought After bipartisan criticism of his comments about women.
Other attendees included former state lawmakers, political candidates and conservative activists such as Ron Armstrong, a Michigan businessman who rose to national prominence for leading protests against Covid-19 restrictions, and Brian Kamenker, president of Massresistance, which designated as an antagonist. LGBT hate group by Southern Poverty Law Center.
Moore said that he comments at many such events and does not remember details about the group.
Armstrong told The Post that he remembered Thomas giving the welcome remarks in Orlando because he was “obviously someone who cares and would like to say hello or welcome.” He said that frontliners bring workers together on many issues and they do not have any central organizational structure. The Post did not find any corporate records for the group.
“The frontliner is nothing,” he said. “It’s all a bunch of people that gather around messages and causes and make sure we’re working together.”
Camanker did not respond to a request for comment.
Susan Voyles, a longtime conservative activist in Georgia, said she attended the March conference as president of the Georgia chapter of the Conservative Eagle Forum and saw Thomas there. Voyles said the meeting focused primarily on education issues highlighted by the pandemic.
In August, several months after the Orlando gathering, Armstrong posted a letter to state legislators from the Michigan Frontliners for Freedom group on Facebook demanding a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election. Armstrong said that the state group is different from the national collective.
According to a photo posted on Twitter, at a Frontliners event in October, Rep. Paul A. Shown the presence of Gosar (R-Ariz.). Marissa Hamilton, recognized on LinkedIn as the grass-roots director of FreedomWorks, tweeted another photo the same day, apparently from the same incident. It included an image of three other Republican members of Congress who were instrumental in advancing lies about the 2020 election: Louis Gohart (Tex.), Marjorie Taylor Green (Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.).
“Congressman” @replouiegohmertCongress women @mtgreeneeand Congress women @laurenboebert Feather @freedomworks Frontliners for Liberty,” according to one version, the tweet read reserveInternet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
Hamilton did not respond to a request for comment, and neither did spokespersons for Goser, Gohmert, Greene and Boebert.
Alice Crits and Amy Gardner contributed to this report.
#President #Ginny #Thomas #group #meeting #calls #Bidens #victory #illegitimate #long #January #video #show#Source#President at Ginny Thomas group meeting calls Biden’s victory illegitimate long after January 6, video show
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NOVEMBER 24, 2010
Top Texas Advocate Dies in Plane Crash
Gregory Coleman, the former Texas solicitor general who argued in two of the most important U.S. Supreme Court cases in recent years, died Tuesday in a plane crash. Coleman was a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas.
A partner in the Yetter Coleman firm of Austin and Houston, Coleman was piloting a small plane that crashed in fog in Destin, Florida. The flight related to family holiday plans, and his mother-in-law and and his wife's uncle who were passengers also died in the crash.
Our sibling publication Texas Lawyerhas more on the story and reaction from shocked friends and colleagues including current Texas SG James Ho, who called it a "deeply sad day."
A soft-spoken lawyer with a calm manner that worked well with the justices, Coleman, 47, argued at the high court just last month in Skinner v. Switzer, representing a Texas prosecutor in a dispute over DNA testing for a death row inmate.
But Coleman was best known for arguments in two 2009 cases, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, an important test of the Voting Rights Act, and Ricci v. DeStefano, a Connecticut affirmative action case. He won both cases in decisions that were viewed as victories for the Court's dominant conservative majority, though they were not as expansive as some conservatives hoped.
Coleman participated in The National Law Journal'sannual Supreme Court review panel discussion in D.C. in 2009, soon after his victories. In the voting rights case Coleman won for his client, a small utility district, the ability to escape from federal scrutiny under the law for its election practices. But the justices did not go so far as to declare the law unconstitutional.
"A lot of commentators have asked, well, were you disappointed that you didn't get Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act struck down?" Coleman said during the NLJ discussion. "The answer is clearly no. Yes, we asked for that. I do think the argument is right, but this is the first case that the Supreme Court has had in quite some time where any part of Section 5 or the apparatus surrounding it has been challenged. Three years ago, nobody was talking about Section 5 or whether its application to various parts of the country might be unfair. People are talking about that now. There are commentators on both sides of the philosophical aisle [who] have been suggesting that Congress really ought to rethink some of what it did in 2006. Maybe it should make some changes."
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https://twitter.com/PiperK/status/1551712520787746816
legal doc eastman
i understand now why the Jan 6th Committee is looking at Ginni Thomas. She ran a group called "Frontliners for Liberty" with Stephanie Coleman that included both real and fake electors. John Eastman, who helped shape the extra-legal "Jan 6th Strategy," spoke to them. 1/
even John Eastman and the Claremont Institute head say the "Jan 6th Strategy" was "political" rather than "legal" in a podcast on Dec 18, 2020. 2/
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pix with ginni and bannon
Another listed administrator of the Ginni Thomas led "FrontLiners for Liberty Group," Stephanie Coleman, has deleted almost all of her posts and photos from her FB page. Many of those photos were of her and Ginni Thomas together, including this one. https://cnbc.com/2022/06/17/ginni-thomas-tied-facebook-group-frontliners-for-liberty-could-be-a-new-focus-in-jan-6-investigation.html
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/ginni-thomas-attempts-influence-overturn/
david b ncrm
Ginni Thomas‘ efforts to influence the overturning of the 2020 presidential election are even wider than previously known. Thomas, a far-right activist and lobby who happens to also be the spouse of the most right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justice, not only engaged in a months-long pressure campaign to influence then-Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to help overturn the results of the election, and pressured 29 GOP lawmakers in Arizona to overturn the election, but also pressured lawmakers in another critical battleground state, Wisconsin, to do so as well.
The Washington Post Thursday reports “new emails show that Thomas also messaged two Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin: state Sen. Kathy Bernier, then chair of the Senate elections committee, and state Rep. Gary Tauchen. Bernier and Tauchen received the email at 10:47 a.m. on Nov. 9, virtually the same time the Arizona lawmakers received a verbatim copy of the message from Thomas. The Bernier email was obtained by The Post, and the Tauchen email was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and provided to The Post.”
The Post published the text of the emails sent by Thomas.
READ MORE: Legal Experts Urge Committee to Subpoena Ginni Thomas After She Backs Away From Testifying
“Please stand strong in the face of media and political pressure,” the emails read. The Post notes they were sent “just days after major media organizations called the presidency for Biden.”
“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,” they also say.
Thomas has promoted vile conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and other events.
“In posts on Facebook, she shared a George Soros conspiracy-theory meme and criticized the teenage survivors of the school massacre in Parkland, Fla., for supporting gun control,” The New York Times Magazine reported in February. “She complained when a town near her Virginia home put up a banner in support of Black Lives Matter, saying the group was filled with extremists ‘seeking to foment a cultural revolution,’ and traded barbs on her public Facebook page.”
Thomas sits on the board of the highly-influential and highly-secretive religious right wing Council for National Policy, which also includes more prominent members like Turning Point USA‘s Charlie Kirk, where Thomas has also served.
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no lnx
Investigations
Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory
The conservative activist and wife of the Supreme Court justice emailed lawmakers in two states in the weeks after the election
By Emma Brown
September 1, 2022
[Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, takes part in the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference at National Harbor in Maryland. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed lawmakers to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory not only in Arizona, as previously reported, but also in a second battleground state, Wisconsin, according to emails obtained under state public-records law.
The Washington Post reported this year that Ginni Thomas emailed 29 Arizona state lawmakers, some of them twice, in November and December 2020. She urged them to set aside Biden’s popular-vote victory and “choose” their own presidential electors, despite the fact that the responsibility for choosing electors rests with voters under Arizona state law.
The new emails show that Thomas also messaged two Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin: state Sen. Kathy Bernier, then chair of the Senate elections committee, and state Rep. Gary Tauchen. Bernier and Tauchen received the email at 10:47 a.m. on Nov. 9, virtually the same time the Arizona lawmakers received a verbatim copy of the message from Thomas. The Bernier email was obtained by The Post, and the Tauchen email was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and provided to The Post.
Thomas sent all of the emails via FreeRoots, an online platform that allowed people to send pre-written emails to multiple elected officials.
“Please stand strong in the face of media and political pressure,” read the emails sent Nov. 9, just days after major media organizations called the presidency for Biden. “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.”
Neither Thomas nor her lawyer, Mark Paoletta, responded to requests for comment.A Supreme Court spokeswoman did not respond to a message seeking comment from Clarence Thomas.
Ginni Thomas’s political activism is highly unusual for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice, and for years it has raised questions about potential conflicts of interest for her husband. She has said that the two of them keep their professional lives separate.
But scrutiny of the Thomases intensified this year after The Post and CBS News obtained copies of text messages that Ginni Thomas exchanged with Mark Meadows, then President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, in the weeks following the 2020 election. Thomas repeatedly urged Meadows to keep fighting to overturn the election results. After Congress certified Biden’s victory Jan. 6, 2021, she expressed anger at Vice President Mike Pence, who had refused to intervene to keep Trump in office. “We are living through what feels like the end of America,” Thomas wrote to Meadows four days later.
Thomas was also in touch during the post-election period with John Eastman, the pro-Trump lawyer who once clerked for her husband, and whose role in the effort to overturn Biden’s win has drawn scrutiny from both the Justice Department and the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot. In early December 2020, Thomas invited Eastman to speak at a meeting of Frontliners for Liberty, which she described as a group of grass-roots activists, according to an email that Eastman published online.
The agenda for the meeting has not been publicly disclosed. But a federal judge ruling on which records had to be turned over in response to a subpoena from the committee wrote that the agenda shows Eastman discussed “State legislative actions that can reverse the media-called election for Joe Biden.” U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ordered Eastman to give congressional investigators emails related to Thomas and meetings of herFrontliners group, finding that the meetings “furthered a critical objective of the January 6 plan: to have contested states certify alternate slates of electors for President Trump.”
The House committee asked Thomas to sit for a voluntary interview in June. The committee also sought a broad range of documents from her, including any related to plans to overturn the election and all communications with members of Congress and their staff and Justice Department employees, according to a copy of the request published by the conservative Daily Caller.
At the time, Thomas indicated she would comply. “I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them,” Thomas told the Daily Caller, her former employer.
Less than two weeks later, on June 28, Paoletta told the committee that while Thomas remained willing to sit for an interview, he did not believe there was “sufficient basis” for her to do so.
In a letter obtained by The Post, Paoletta — a longtime close associate of the Thomases — described Ginni Thomas’s text messages to Meadows as “entirely unremarkable” and said they do not suggest she had any role in the attack on the Capitol. He cast her invitation to Eastman as simply an invitation to speak, not an endorsement of his views or “any indication of a working relationship.” He also said she played no role in organizing the email campaign to Arizona lawmakers and did not draft or edit the form letters she sent.
In an interview, Bernier, the Wisconsin lawmaker, said it would have been appropriate for the state legislature to consider decertifying the 2020 results in the weeks following the election if evidence had emerged of significant voter fraud. “But as we went through the process and the legal challenges were made and discounted by the judicial system, there was nothing proven as far as actual voter fraud,” she said.
Bernier said she had not realized that Thomas was among the thousands of people who emailed her after the election, but she said Thomas “has a First Amendment right to speak her mind.”
“I was married for 20 years. I took on some identity of my husband, but I had my own mind,” Bernier said. “Just because you’re married to someone doesn’t mean that you’re a clone.”
Tauchen did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Democratic lawmakers renewed calls to create a code of ethical conduct for the U.S. Supreme Court amid mounting scrutiny of Justice Thomas and his wife. (Video: The Washington Post)
Thomas’s Nov. 9 email was one of thousands sent via the FreeRoots platform that inundated Bernier and Tauchen’s offices in the weeks after the election, records show.
The Wisconsin State Journal reported in January 2021 that of more than 10,000 pages of emails received during that period by Bernier and state Rep. Ron Tusler (R), then the chair of his chamber’s elections committee, the majority were “mass-generated form letters making nonspecific claims about alleged irregularities, a right-wing fraud-finding effort and a clip from Fox’s Sean Hannity show.”
The fact that Thomas sent one of the FreeRoots emails to Bernier has not been previously reported. “Please do your Constitutional duty!” read the subject line of the message she sent.
According to the records disclosed by Bernier’s office to The Post, Thomas was the fourth of more than 30 people who sent that particular form email Nov. 9 and 10. The first sender of that email, three hours before Thomas, was a person named Stephanie Coleman, according to the records.
A woman named Stephanie Miller Coleman is the widow of one of Clarence Thomas’s former clerks. She was listed as the co-administrator, with Thomas, of a private Facebook group for Frontliners.The page listing the group’s administrators is no longer publicly visible.
Coleman did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Ginni Thomas’s communications with key players in the effort to overturn the election have led to calls for her husband to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election and attempts to subvert it. Clarence Thomas has given no indication that he intends to do so.
This year, eight Supreme Court justices declined Trump’s request to block congressional investigators from gaining access to White House records that might shed light on the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Thomas was the only justice to dissent, siding with Trump.
Jacqueline Alemany contributed to this report.
More from Investigations
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...“Ginni” Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed lawmakers to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory not only in Arizona, as previously reported, but also in a second battleground state, Wisconsin, according to emails obtained under state public-records law.
The Washington Post reportedthis year that Ginni Thomas emailed 29 Arizona state lawmakers, some of them twice, in November and December 2020. She urged them to set aside Biden’s popular-vote victory and “choose” their own presidential electors, despite the fact that the responsibility for choosing electors rests with voters under Arizona state law.
The new emails show that Thomas also messaged two Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin: state Sen. Kathy Bernier, then chair of the Senate elections committee, and state Rep. Gary Tauchen. Bernier and Tauchen received the email at 10:47 a.m. on Nov. 9, virtually the same time the Arizona lawmakers received a verbatim copy of the message from Thomas. The Bernier email was obtained by The Post, and the Tauchen email was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and provided to The Post.....
“Please stand strong in the face of media and political pressure,” read the emails sent Nov. 9, just days after major media organizations called the presidency for Biden. “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.”
Neither Thomas nor her lawyer, Mark Paoletta, responded to requests for comment. A Supreme Court spokeswoman did not respond to a message seeking comment from Clarence Thomas.
Ginni Thomas’s political activism is highly unusual for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice, and for years it has raised questions about potential conflicts of interest for her husband. She has said that the two of them keep their professional lives separate.
But scrutiny of the Thomases intensified this year after The Post and CBS News obtainedcopies of text messages that Ginni Thomas exchanged with Mark Meadows, then President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, in the weeks following the 2020 election. Thomas repeatedly urged Meadows to keep fighting to overturn the election results. After Congress certified Biden’s victory Jan. 6, 2021, she expressed anger at Vice President Mike Pence, who had refused to intervene to keep Trump in office. “We are living through what feels like the end of America,” Thomas wrote to Meadows four days later.
thomas was also in touch during the post-election period with John Eastman, the pro-Trump lawyer who once clerked for her husband, and whose role in the effort to overturn Biden’s win has drawn scrutiny from both the Justice Department and the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot. In early December 2020, Thomas invited Eastmanto speak at a meeting of Frontliners for Liberty, which she described as a group of grass-roots activists, according to an email that Eastman published online.
The agenda for the meeting has not been publicly disclosed. But a federal judge ruling on which records had to be turned over in response to a subpoena from the committee wrote that the agenda shows Eastman discussed “State legislative actions that can reverse the media-called election for Joe Biden.” U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ordered Eastman to give congressional investigators emails related to Thomas and meetings of her Frontliners group, finding that the meetings “furthered a critical objective of the January 6 plan: to have contested states certify alternate slates of electors for President Trump.”
The House committee asked Thomas to sit for a voluntary interview in June. The committee also sought a broad range of documents from her, including any related to plans to overturn the election and all communications with members of Congress and their staff and Justice Department employees, according to a copy of the request published by the conservative Daily Caller.
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ref
no lnx
Ginni Thomas pressed 29 Ariz. lawmakers to help overturn Trump’s defeat, emails show
By Emma Brown
June 10, 2022
Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, speaks at a conference in 2017. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona — 27 more than previously known — to set aside Joe Biden’s popular vote victory and “choose” presidential electors, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.
The Post reported last month that Thomas sent emails to two Arizona House members, in November and December 2020, urging them to help overturn Biden’s win by selecting presidential electors — a responsibility that belongs to Arizona voters under state law. Thomas sent the messages using FreeRoots, an online platform intended to make it easy to send pre-written emails to multiple elected officials.
Democratic lawmakers renewed calls to create a code of ethical conduct for the U.S. Supreme Court amid mounting scrutiny of Justice Thomas and his wife. (Video: The Washington Post)
New documents show that Thomas indeed used the platform to reach many lawmakers simultaneously. On Nov. 9, she sent identical emails to 20 members of the Arizona House and seven Arizona state senators. That represents more than half of the Republican members of the state legislature at the time.
The message, just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, urged lawmakers to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure” and claimed that the responsibility to choose electors was “yours and yours alone.” They had “power to fight back against fraud” and “ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen,” the email said.
Among the lawmakers who received the email was then-Rep. Anthony Kern, a Stop the Steal supporter who lost his reelection bid in November 2020 and then joined U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) and others as a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence, a last-ditch effort to overturn Biden’s victory. Kern was photographed outside the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6 but has said he did not enter the building, according to local media reports.
Kern did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. He is seeking his party’s nomination for a seat in the Arizona state Senate and has been endorsed by former president Donald Trump.
On Dec. 13, the day before members of the electoral college were slated to cast their votes and seal Biden’s victory, Thomas emailed 22 House members and one senator. “Before you choose your state’s Electors … consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” the email said. It linked to a video of a man urging swing-state lawmakers to “put things right” and “not give in to cowardice.”
Speaker of the House Russell “Rusty” Bowers and Rep. Shawnna Bolick, the two recipients previously identified, told The Post in May that the outreach from Thomas had no bearing on their decisions about how to handle claims of election fraud.
But the revelation that Ginni Thomas was directly involved in pressing them to override the popular vote — an act that would have been without precedent in the modern era — intensified questions about whether her husband should recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 presidential election and attempts to subvert it. Ginni Thomas’s status as a leading conservative political activist has set her apart from other spouses of Supreme Court justices.
Ginni Thomas did not respond to requests seeking comment for this report. She has long insisted that she and her husband operate in separate professional lanes.
A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not respond to questions for Clarence Thomas.
The Post obtained the emails under Arizona’s public records law, which — unlike the laws in some other key 2020 swing states — allows the public to access emails, text messages and other written communications to and from state lawmakers.
In March, The Post and CBS News obtained text messages that Ginni Thomas sent in the weeks after the 2020 election to Mark Meadows, then Trump’s chief of staff. The messages showed Thomas spreading false claims and urging Meadows to keep fighting for Trump to remain in the White House.
“That conflict of interest just screams at you,” said Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who serves on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, on MSNBC in response to The Post’s May report revealing the emails to Bolick and Bowers.
Schiff pointed to Clarence Thomas’s decision not to recuse when Trump went to the Supreme Court to try to block the House committee from getting access to his White House records. The high court declined to block the release of those documents. Thomas, siding with Trump, was the only justice to dissent.
“Here you have the wife of a Supreme Court justice,” Schiff said, trying to “get Arizona to improperly cast aside the votes of millions. And also, to add to it, her husband on the Supreme Court, writing a dissent in a case arguing against providing records to Congress that might have revealed some of these same e-mails.”
After the May article, Mark Paoletta — a longtime ally of the Thomases who, as a member of the George H.W. Bush administration, played a role in the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court — confirmed that Ginni Thomas signed the emails, but he sought to minimize her role.
“Ginni signed her name to a pre-written form letter that was signed by thousands of citizens and sent to state legislators across the country,” Paoletta wrote on Twitter on May 20. He described Thomas’s activities as “a private citizen joining a letter writing campaign” and added, sarcastically, “How disturbing, what a threat!”
The letter-writing campaigns were organized on FreeRoots.com, which advertised itself as a platform to amplify grass-roots advocacy across the political spectrum. A Post review of its archived webpages shows that it was heavily used in late 2020 by groups seeking to overturn the presidential election results.
One of those groups was Every Legal Vote, which organized the campaign to send the message that Ginni Thomas sent on Nov. 9. In those first days after the Nov. 3 election, Every Legal Vote described itself online as a “labor of love by American citizens, in partnership” with the nonprofit United in Purpose, according to webpages preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. United in Purpose, which harnesses data to galvanize conservative Christian voters, in recent years hosted luncheons where Thomas presented her Impact Awards to right-wing leaders.
On Dec. 14, 2020, Biden electors in Arizona cast their votes, after the election results were certified by Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) and Gov. Doug Ducey (R).
Trump electors met in Arizona that day and signed a document declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified Electors.” One of them was Kern, the outgoing state representative.
Kern was among more than a dozen lawmakers who signed on to a letter to Congress that same day calling for the state’s electoral votes to go to Trump or “be nullified completely until a full forensic audit can be conducted.”
The lawmakers’ letter was an exhibit in Kern and Gohmert’s lawsuit asking a federal court to rule that Pence had the “exclusive authority and sole discretion” in deciding which electoral votes to count for a given state. The plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to intervene after the case was dismissed in lower courts. The day after the Jan. 6 insurrection, the court declined in an unsigned order.
More from Investigations
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/05/20/ginni-thomas-arizona-election-emails/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/what-is-ginni-thomas-saying-now-the-evolution-of-an-unusually-outspoken-supreme-court-spouse/2018/12/26/883da960-f753-11e8-8c9a-860ce2a8148f_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_28&itid=lk_inline_manual_16
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wapo no lnx
INVESTIGATIONS
John Eastman says Ginni Thomas invited him to speak on ‘election litigation’
By Emma Brown, Jacqueline Alemany and Josh Dawsey
June 16, 2022
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md., on Feb. 23, 2017. (Susan Walsh/AP)
John Eastman, the lawyer who played a key role in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election, confirmed Thursday that the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas invited him a month after the election to speak at a meeting she was helping to organize.
Eastman’s disclosure came a day after The Washington Post reported that the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had obtained email correspondence between him and Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist and staunch supporter of former president Donald Trump. Individuals involved in the investigation said the emails — which have not been made public — showed that Thomas’s efforts to help overturn the election were more extensive than previously known, The Post reported.
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an 6 22
When the wife of a U.S. Supreme Court justice is trying to help a president stay in power even though he has been voted out of office, it is painfully obvious that American democracy is in trouble. It has been well-documented that Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, tried to help keep former President Donald Trump in the White House even after he lost the 2020 election — from a series of text messages exchanged with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to her communications with pro-Trump attorney John C. Eastman. And according to reporting in the Washington Post, Ginni Thomas continued to associate with “Stop the Steal” extremists even after Joe Biden was sworn in as president on January 20, 2021.
In a report published on June 20, Post journalists Emma Brown, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Rosalind S. Helderman explain, “Two months after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to help President Donald Trump stay in office, Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, attended a gathering of right-wing activists where a speaker declared to roaring applause that Trump was still the ‘legitimate president,’ a video recording of the event shows.”
That event, which took place in Orlando, Florida on March 6, 2021, was a meeting of the group Frontliners for Liberty — and the speaker was the Rev. C.L. Bryant, a Baptist minister and far-right radio host who has also been active in FreedomWorks.Although Bryant endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, he later became an ardent supporter of Trump and the MAGA movement.
A video of the March 6, 2021 event posted on Facebook, according to the Post, shows Bryant saying, “There is a robbery that is going on in this country right now. In fact, I say it to you, and I’ll say it loud and clear — and I’m not ashamed to say it. I won’t bite my tongue. I do believe that Donald John Trump is the only legitimate president.”
Brown, Stanley-Becker and Helderman note that Frontliners for Liberty “vaulted from obscurity to national attention last week with the disclosure that Thomas had invited pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman to speak to its members in December 2020.”
“While text messages and e-mails unearthed in recent weeks have shown that Thomas was involved in those efforts before January 6,” the Post reporters note, “her attendance at the Orlando gathering indicates that her alliance with election deniers continued even after Joe Biden was inaugurated. Frontliners has hosted hard-right lawmakers, insisted on strict secrecy and proclaimed that the nation’s top enemy is the ‘radical fascist left,’ according to social media posts, court filings and interviews with several people involved in the group.”
The reporters add, “One photograph from the Orlando event shows Bryant posing with Thomas. Others show Thomas wearing a name tag decorated with a yellow ribbon she and others wore saying ‘Trouble Maker.’”
Frontliners for Liberty, according to the Post, has made a point of being secretive. Eastman, in a filing in May, said the group operates in a “cone of silence” — which is a “Get Smart” reference from the 1960s. The “cone of silence” was a fictional device on the 1960s television comedy “Get Smart,” which famously blended slapstick humor with the espionage/secret agent genre.
Eastman quoted an e-mail from Frontliners for Liberty, which read, “We are careful about who is on the phone and who is in the room and we do not leak what happens, what is said or who is in the meeting — ever!”
Although Ginni Thomas has claimed that she keeps her work as a MAGA activist separate from her husband’s work on the U.S. Supreme Court, critics of the Thomases believe that Justice Thomas is guilty of some major conflicts of interest. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City has called for Justice Thomas to either resign or be impeached, although her recommendation hasn’t gotten much support from fellow Democrats.
Clarence Thomas hasn’t recused himself from cases involving the 2020 election. And even though his wife has been a major anti-abortion activist, he is among the justices who joined Justice Samuel Alito in a majority draft opinion that called for overturning Roe v. Wade.
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https://www.rawstory.com/frontliners-facebook-group/
no lnx
Under fire, Ginni Thomas 'Frontliners' Facebook group faces calls for investigation
Matthew Chapman
June 17, 2022
On Friday, CNBC reported that a Facebook group led by right-wing activist and Supreme Court spouse Ginni Thomas could face investigation by the House Select Committee on January 6, after revelations that the group sought to partner with pro-Trump attorney John Eastman.
"Congressional investigators said they planned to ask Ginni Thomas to testify before the committee hours after Trump attorney John Eastman on Thursday publicly posted a Dec. 4, 2020 email from Thomas asking him to speak to a gathering she called 'Frontliners,' which she described as featuring 'grassroots state leaders,'" reported Brian Schwartz. "Ginni Thomas is listed as an administrator of a Facebook group that goes by a similar name and description: 'FrontLiners for Liberty.'"
"The private group, which listed more than 50 members, was created in August 2020, just two months before the November elections, according to the page’s description," said the report. "The group, which CNBC reviewed before it was removed from public view, described itself as 'a new collaborative, liberty-focused, action-oriented group of state leaders representing grassroots armies to CONNECT, INFORM and ACTIVATE each other weekly to preserve constitutional governance.' Although Thomas’ personal Facebook page isn’t verified, it contained numerous photos of Justice Thomas."
According to the report, the Facebook group was taken out of public view as soon as CNBC inquired with Thomas about it.
This comes after recent reports that the committee had obtained email correspondences between Thomas and Eastman, and that Thomas also contacted at least 29 Arizona state legislators asking for their help to overturn Joe Biden's win in the state.
Eastman was the architect of a scheme, broadly considered to be illegal, that called on former Vice President Mike Pence to declare Trump the winner of the election by voiding electors from certain states Biden carried. Experts believe new revelations he knew his plans were illegal as he attempted them could put him in criminal jeopardy.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/ginni-thomas-tied-facebook-group-frontliners-for-liberty-could-be-a-new-focus-in-jan-6-investigation.html
cnbc
a Facebook group that appears to be run by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, could become a new point of interest in the U.S. House Select Committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Congressional investigators said they planned to ask Ginni Thomas to testify before the committee hours after Trump attorney John Eastman on Thursday publicly posted a Dec. 4, 2020 email from Thomas asking him to speak to a gathering she called “Frontliners,” which she described as featuring “grassroots state leaders.” Ginni Thomas is listed as an administrator of a Facebook group that goes by a similar name and description: “FrontLiners for Liberty.”
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The private group, which listed more than 50 members, was created in August 2020, just two months before the November elections, according to the page’s description.
The group,which CNBC reviewed before it was removed from public view, described itselfas “a new collaborative, liberty-focused, action-oriented group of state leaders representing grassroots armies to CONNECT, INFORM and ACTIVATE each other weekly to preserve constitutional governance.” Although Thomas’ personal Facebook page isn’t verified, it contained numerous photos of Justice Thomas.
The group’s pages were removed from public view after CNBC reached out to Thomas about the organization. It now shows a notice from Facebook saying that it’s either been deleted or the privacy settings have been changed.
CNBC also tried to get answers through Facebook messenger to Stephanie Coleman, who is also listed administrator of the group and the wife of the late Gregory Coleman who was Texas’ solicitor general. Greg Coleman was once a clerk for Justice Thomas.[kia in plane crash --> listserv says paoletta]
Coleman and Thomas are repeatedly pictured together on Coleman’s personal Facebook page, including a photo of the two together in December 2016 with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
[doc]
thomas asked Eastman to speak to her Frontliners group on Dec. 8, according to her email to him. Eastman said Thomas “invited me to give an update about election litigation to a group she met with periodically,” according to his post on Substack, an email newsletter subscription service. Thomas told Eastman she was “on sabbatical until this election stuff is resolved.”
At the time, Trump and his allies were filing legal challenges against the 2020 election results after President Joe Biden was declared the winner. Trump and those close to him lost most of those lawsuits.
Thomas’ email to Eastman appears to be at issue in his legal dispute with congressional investigators looking into the Jan. 6 attack. A federal judge recently ruled against Eastman,who was trying to assert attorney-client privilege to withhold emails about the 2020 election. The judge ordered Eastman to turn over ten documents, including four that pertained to a meeting on Dec. 8, 2020, which was the same date Ginni Thomas asked him to speak to Frontliners. “Two emails are the group’s high-profile leader inviting Dr. Eastman to speak at the meeting, and two contain the meeting’s agenda,” U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote in his June. 7 order.
Based on the event’s agenda, Eastman discussed ”‘State legislative actions that can reverse the media-called election for Joe Biden.’ Another speaker gave an ‘update on [state] legislature actions regarding electoral votes,’” Carter wrote.
Eastman, according to the Jan. 6 House select committee investigating the riot that took place about 17 months ago, tried to convince former Vice President Mike Pence that he held virtually unilateral power to overturn the election. Yet, according to Pence’s former counsel who testified at a Thursday Jan. 6 committee hearing, Eastman once told him that the Trump advisor’s own legal theory would be rejected 9-0 if it went before the Supreme Court.
The select committee said it plans to invite Ginni Thomas to testify about her correspondence with Eastman. Thomas told The Daily Caller that she was willing to testify. “I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them,” Thomas said. She reportedly supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sending text messages to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows that encouraged him to stand behind the then president’s false election claims.
A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, a spokesman for the Jan. 6 House select committee, Thomas, Eastman and his attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
The Frontliners group also worked with a conservative advocacy organization known as FreedomWorks, according to the nonprofit’s spokesman Peter Vicenzi. He also said that Thomas and FreedomWorks activists have been allies for years. FreedomWorks does not publicly disclose their donors.
“Frontliners for Liberty, it is yet another conservative grassroots organization that FreedomWorks partners with to advance our issue set,” Vicenzi said in an email. “Ginni Thomas, for years, has been an invaluable ally to our activist community when it comes to engaging on shared issues.”
Since Trump lost the election, FreedomWorks has pushed the idea that there needs to be election reforms. Conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who used to work with Trump’s campaign, now chairs FreedomWorks’ multimillion dollar National Election Protection Initiative, according to Newsmax.
Merissa Hamilton, who says on her LinkedIn page that she’s a grassroots director at FreedomWorks, tweeted out in October a picture at what she described as an event at“FreedomWorks Frontliners for Liberty.” The picture showed Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Louie Gohmert, R-Texas and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. attending the event.
After CNBC emailed Hamilton about the tweets, they were deleted off her page. She did not return follow up requests for comment.
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Jun 17, 2022congressional investigators mentioned they deliberate to ask ginni thomas to testify earlier than the committee hours after trump legal professional john eastman on thursday publicly posted a dec. 4, 2020 electronic mail from thomas asking him to talk to a gathering she known as "frontliners," which she described as that includes "grassroots …
Ginni Thomas-tied Facebook group 'FrontLiners for Liberty' could be a ...
Jun 17, 2022Congressional investigators said they planned to ask Ginni Thomas to testify before the committee hours after Trump attorney John Eastman on Thursday publicly posted a Dec. 4, 2020 email from Thomas asking him to speak to a gathering she called "Frontliners," which she described as featuring "grassroots state leaders."
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https://www.cnn.com › 2022 › 06 › 16 › politics › ginni-thomas-january-6-supreme-court › index.html
Ginni Thomas' connection to 2020 election reversal gambits | CNN Politics
Jun 16, 2022Not long after the Free Beacon interview, CNN revealed that the committee had obtained texts Thomas exchanged with Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in which Thomas cheered the efforts...
https://news.yahoo.com › ginni-thomas-exchanged-emails-trump-112447286.html
Ginni Thomas Exchanged Emails With Trump Lawyer John Eastman: Report
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https://news.yahoo.com › trump-campaign-expense-lawyers-jan-085258871.html
Trump's New Campaign Expense: Lawyers for Jan. 6 Witnesses
TodayPhoto Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyIt's been widely reported that former President Donald Trump has covered legal expenses for witnesses testifying before the Jan. 6 committee, but the full amount that Trump has been forking over has largely remained a mystery.A new federal filing has fleshed that number out. And it turns out, it's a lot higher than previously ...
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