botkin, geoffrey

<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ginni az email freeroots had link to his video</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">//finchem</font></div><div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><a href="https://twitter.com/natedog155/status/1536052448795713544"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://twitter.com/natedog155/status/1536052448795713544</font></a></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">twit natedog</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no pix twt</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Nate dog'</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@natedog155</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">·</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jun 12</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thanks to </font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@visionsurreal</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> we now know Mark Finchem - an Arizona State Rep - whos currently running for Secretary of State - the top elections official in the state - shared the very same video of Geoffrey Botkin - though unclear to me if it was via Ginni Thomas or other sources.</font></span></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Nate dog'</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2x?</font></div><div><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/05/20/ginni-thomas-arizona-election-emails/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></a></div><div><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/05/20/ginni-thomas-arizona-election-emails/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/05/20/ginni-thomas-arizona-election-emails/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wapo no lnx
<b>Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice, pressed Ariz. lawmakers to help reverse Trump’s loss, emails show</b>By Emma Brown
Updated May 20, 2022 at 2:36 p.m. EDT|Published <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">May 20, 2022 </span>
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Virginia

“Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court

Justice Clarence Thomas, attends the swearing-in ceremony for Justice

Amy Coney Barrett at the White House on Oct. 26, 2020. (Patrick

Semansky/AP)

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the conservative activist

and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona

lawmakers after the 2020 election to set aside Joe Biden’s popular-vote

victory and choose “a clean slate of Electors,” according to emails

obtained by The Washington Post.

The emails, sent by Ginni Thomas

to a pair of lawmakers on Nov. 9, 2020, argued that legislators needed

to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud. Though she did

not mention either candidate by name, the context was clear.

Just

days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and

nationwide, Thomas urged the lawmakers to “stand strong in the face of

political and media pressure.” She told the lawmakers that the

responsibility to choose electors was “yours and yours alone” and said

they had “power to fight back against fraud.”
<b>
Thomas sent the

messages via an online platform designed to make it easy to send

prewritten form emails to multiple elected officials, </b>according to a review of the emails, obtained under the state’s public-records law.

The

messages show that Thomas, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, was

more deeply involved in the effort to overturn Biden’s win than has been

previously reported. In sending the emails, Thomas played a role in the

extraordinary scheme to keep Trump in office by substituting the will

of legislatures for the will of voters.

Thomas’s actions also

underline concerns about potential conflicts of interest that her

husband has already faced — and may face in the future — in deciding

cases related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Those questions

intensified in March, when The Post and CBS News obtained text messages

that Thomas sent in late 2020 to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows,

pressing him to help reverse the election.

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The emails were sent

to Russell “Rusty” Bowers, a veteran legislator and speaker of the

Arizona House, and Shawnna Bolick</span>, who was first elected to the chamber

in 2018 and served on the House Elections Committee during the 2020

session.
<b>
“Article II of the United States Constitution gives

you an awesome responsibility: to choose our state’s Electors,” read the

Nov. 9 email. “… [P]lease take action to ensure that a clean slate of

Electors is chosen.”</b>

Thomas’s name also appears on an email

to the two representatives on Dec. 13, the day before members of the

electoral college met to cast their votes and seal Biden’s victory.

“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

included a link to a video of a man delivering a message meant for

swing-state lawmakers, urging them to “put things right” and “not give

in to cowardice.”

“You have only hours to act,” said the<b> speaker, who is not identified in the video.</b>

By

December, the claim that legislators should override the popular vote

in key states and appoint Trump’s electors was also being pushed

publicly by John C. Eastman, a former law clerk to Clarence Thomas, and

Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer.

Trump allies argued that

pandemic-era changes in election administration and supposedly

widespread fraud meant that elections had not been conducted in

accordance with state legislatures’ directions and that, under the U.S.

Constitution, the results therefore could be cast aside. Many legal

experts have called those arguments unpersuasive and anti-democratic,

and no state legislature complied. Efforts to persuade state lawmakers

to name new electors are among the issues under examination by the

congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Courts

turned back dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies in an

attempt to challenge the 2020 election outcome, and there is no evidence

of voting machine manipulation or other widespread fraud.

Ginni Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not respond to messages seeking comment from Clarence Thomas.

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ginni

Thomas has insisted that she and her husband have kept their work

separate, but her political activism has set her apart from other

Supreme Court spouses. About a decade ago, she and Stephen K. Bannon —

who later became chief strategist in the Trump White House — were among

the organizers of<b> Groundswell, </b>a group formed to battle liberals

and establishment Republicans. Groundswell dedicated itself to “a 30

front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation,” according to

emails uncovered by Mother Jones at the time. “<b>Election integrity” was among the topics discussed in the group’s first months,</b> the emails show.</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Thomas’s

influence in Washington grew during the Trump presidency as her views

moved into the GOP mainstream. Clarence and Ginni Thomas had lunch with

Trump at the White House in 2018, then attended a state dinner the

following year. Also in 2019, she and fellow right-wing activists

attended a White House luncheon, where the New York Times reported that

they told Trump his aides were blocking their preferred candidates for

administration appointments.</span>

Over those same years, at

annual luncheons, Thomas handed out “Impact Awards” to right-wing

figures. Recipients have included Meadows, then a congressman chairing

the hard-right Freedom Caucus; Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe;

and Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Thomas is a member of the Council

for National Policy, a network of prominent conservative activists,

some of whom helped press claims of election fraud. She recently said

she attended the pro-Trump rally at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6,

2021.

<b>Thomas sent the emails via freeroots.com, a website

meant to give political organizers an efficient means of conducting

email campaigns</b>. The email address of the sender in Thomas’s emails is displayed as <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Ginni Thomas<noreply /></span>@freeroots.com>.”

A representative of FreeRoots did not respond to a message seeking comment.

The

Nov. 9 email carried the subject line, “Please do your Constitutional

duty!” In addition to pushing the lawmakers to appoint electors, the

email asked for a meeting to discuss pursuing an “audit” of the vote.

Under

the U.S. Constitution, states appoint presidential electors “in such

manner” as the legislatures direct. Historically, some state

legislatures appointed electors directly, but in the modern era states

have delegated that responsibility to voters. In urging Arizona

lawmakers to “choose” electors after Biden had already prevailed,

Thomas’s messages claimed lawmakers could intervene in that process.

The

records obtained by The Post do not show any response from Bowers,

whose refusal to help overturn Biden’s victory in Arizona made him the

target of a recall campaign. When Trump’s legal team pressed to replace

Biden electors with Trump electors, Bowers released a public statement

explaining that they were asking legislators to do something forbidden

by state law.

“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the

results of the presidential election. I voted for President Trump and

worked hard to reelect him,” it said. “But I cannot and will not

entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome

of a certified election.”

A spokesman for Bowers told The Post

that hundreds of thousands of messages were sent to the speaker’s office

in the post-election period. “Speaker Bowers did not see, much less

read, the vast majority of those messages, including the form email sent

by Mrs. Thomas,” said the spokesman, Andrew Wilder.

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Bolick

is married to Clint Bolick, an associate justice of the Arizona Supreme

Court, who worked with Clarence Thomas early in his career and has said

he considers the justice a mentor.

Shawnna Bolick wrote back to

Ginni Thomas on Nov. 10, 2020, “I hope you and Clarence are doing

great!” She gave Thomas guidance on how to submit complaints about any

of her experiences with voter fraud in Arizona.</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Bolick,

who is now seeking the Republican nomination to be Arizona’s secretary

of state, told The Post that she received tens of thousands of emails in

the months after the election and responded to Thomas in the same way

she responded to everyone else.

Thomas replied: “Fun that this came to you! Just part of our campaign to help states feel America’s eyes!!!”</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In

the reply, Thomas’s personal email address is visible, and it matches

an address she has used previously, The Post confirmed. Under her

message is an <b>unusual tag line that has appeared in other emails that

are confirmed to have been sent by Thomas, including in 2021 to the

staff of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R): “Sent from Ginni’s iPhone, a

by-product of entrepreneurial free market capitalism.</b> Competition, hard work, innovations and lack of government interference make great things possible! God bless America!”</span>

Thomas was then serving on the board of<b> CNP Action</b>,

the political advocacy arm of the Council for National Policy. CNP

Action was using its influence in Republican circles at the time to try

to keep Trump in office. On Nov. 13, 2020, CNP Action held a workshop

titled “Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?” featuring, among

other speakers, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Cleta Mitchell, </span>according

to an agenda that researcher Brent Allpress provided to the

left-leaning watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy, which

published it that same month. Mitchell, a lawyer, assisted Trump in his

efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia.

<b>After that workshop, the group circulated guidance to focus efforts on legislators in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona</b>.

“Demand that they not abandon their Constitutional responsibilities at a

time such as this,” read the guidance, which was also obtained by

Allpress and first published by the Center for Media and Democracy. It

said to push for new electors “in states where constitutional rights

have been violated and evidence of substantial fraud has been

established.”

The guidance advised visiting the website everylegalvote.com “to report fraud and take action.”
Visitors

to the site could click a button and be taken to freeroots.com,

according to webpages preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback

Machine. That landing page urged visitors to press the “take action”

button to “email every swing House and Senate leader in one easy click.”

<b>Because

that landing page is no longer online, it is no longer possible to

click through on the link. But language in Thomas’s first email aligns

closely with language that appears in a preview when a FreeRoots link

that was archived several days after that email is shared on messaging

platforms</b>.

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The site everylegalvote.com initially said that it was produced in partnership with <b>United in Purpose, </b>a

nonprofit group known for gathering and deploying data to galvanize

conservative Christian voters. That organization has hosted the

luncheons where Thomas presents her “Impact Awards.”</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But

the reference to United in Purpose was deleted within days. It was

replaced with language identifying three “Founding Sponsors”: the Texas

security firm Allied Security Operations Group, the Texas nonprofit

group Liberty Center for God and Country, and the online talk show

“Economic War Room.”</span>

Representatives of United in Purpose

and the three sponsors of everylegalvote.com did not respond to messages

seeking comment. All three sponsors have promoted election-fraud

claims, according to previous Post reports.

In the month after

the election, the Trump campaign and other Republicans filed dozens of

lawsuits challenging the outcome. By early December, Eastman and

Giuliani were telling lawmakers in key swing states won by Biden that

they had the authority and even the obligation to disregard the vote and

select their own electors.

“Your argument is that essentially we

have a failed election that would require the legislature to step in

and assign electors. Am I correct?” a Georgia senator asked Eastman

during a Dec. 3 hearing.

“Yes,” Eastman said.

The Dec. 13 emails repeated the claim that legislators could “choose” electors.

“As

state lawmakers, you have the Constitutional power and authority to

protect the integrity of our elections — and we need you to exercise

that power now!” the email said. “Never before in our nation’s history

have our elections been so threatened by fraud and unconstitutional

procedures.”
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
The two-minute video it linked to, titled “A Word To

Heroic Legislators,” has since been removed from YouTube for violating

community guidelines. The video’s Web address, which is visible in the

email, was included in a December 2020 newsletter written by activist<b> Geoffrey Botkin,</b> who appears to be the person featured in the video.

Botkin,

who has published numerous podcasts and videos about the election and

other matters, wrote in the newsletter that he had uploaded “A Word To

Heroic Legislators” to another video hosting service. The video remains

visible there.

“I’m asking you to stand up and lead heroically,” Botkin says in the video, urging lawmakers to appoint electors.

<b>“We

have to admit, legally and politically it’s way too late for other

people to do it. Clever lawyers or the Supreme Court, they cannot now

come to the rescue,” he continues. “This is a moment, a unique moment in

American history, demanding that state legislators set America back on

her foundations by using a power that you may never have known that you

had — but you do have it.”</b>

Botkin did not respond to a message seeking comment.</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The

video link and some of the language in the email match language that

appears in an archived version of the landing page for a freeroots.com

email campaign organized by <b>Act for America</b>, a group that has accused

U.S. Muslim organizations of supporting terrorism and of trying to

impose Islamic law across the country.</span>

A representative of <b>Act for America </b>did not respond to requests for comment.

On

Dec. 14, 2020, Biden electors in Arizona cast their votes, after the

election results were certified by Democratic Secretary of State Katie

Hobbs and Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">

On that same day, Bolick was among dozens of Arizona lawmakers who

signed on to a letter to Congress calling for the state’s electoral

votes to go to Trump or “be nullified completely until a full forensic

audit can be conducted.”</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
Bolick

told The Post she signed on to that effort because she backed the idea

of an audit, not because of any communication she received from Thomas.</span>

Jacqueline Alemany and Alice Crites contributed to this report.
More from Investigations

</font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Geoffrey Botkin  3rd degree connection3rd</font></div><div>Founder, GeoffreyBotkin.com; Curator, Stand Up and Lead Social Media; Director, Atlantic Society for the Study of Culture;</div><div>Nashville Metropolitan Area  Contact info</div><div>500+ connections</div><div>
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</div><div>Geoffrey hasn't posted latelyGeoffrey hasn't posted lately</div><div>Geoffrey’s recent posts and comments will be displayed here.Geoffrey’s recent posts and comments will be displayed here.</div><div>Show all activity</div><div>ExperienceExperience</div><div>Senior AdvisorSenior Advisor</div><div>Western Conservatory of the Arts and SciencesWestern Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences</div><div>Jan 2005 - Jan 2018 · 13 yrs 1 moJan 2005 - Jan 2018 · 13 yrs 1 mo</div><div>Western Conservatory of the Arts and SciencesWestern Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences</div><div>SkillsSkills</div><div>Public SpeakingPublic Speaking</div><div>
</div><div>Endorsed by Allen B. Wolfe and 1 other who is highly skilled at thisEndorsed by Allen B. Wolfe and 1 other who is highly skilled at this</div><div>69 endorsements69 endorsements</div><div>EntrepreneurshipEntrepreneurship</div><div>44 endorsements44 endorsements</div><div>Strategic PlanningStrategic Planning</div><div>38 endorsements38 endorsements</div><div>Show all 39 skills</div><div>InterestsInterests</div><div>CompaniesCompanies</div><div>Well Rooted Gardens logo</div><div>Well Rooted GardensWell Rooted Gardens</div><div>32 followers32 followers</div><div>Kepler Education logo</div><div>Kepler EducationKepler Education</div><div>317 followers317 followers</div><div>Show all 7 companies</div><div>
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rushdooney biblical law bk</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://chalcedon.edu/store/34130-17-remembering-rush-with-geoff-botkin-law-liberty-podcast">https://chalcedon.edu/store/34130-17-remembering-rush-with-geoff-botkin-law-liberty-podcast</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="color: rgb(101, 87, 99); font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Geoffrey Botkin is the founder of The Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences.</span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div></div>