1981–1991 When Daub took office in 1981, Thomas moved to Washington, D.C., and worked in his office for 18 months. attending congressional hearings where she represented the interests of the business community. In 1989, she became manager of employee relations at the Chamber of Commerce.
1991–2009 In 1991, Thomas returned to government service in the Legislative Affairs Office of the
U.S. Department of Labor, where she argued against comparable-worth legislation that would have mandated equal pay for women and men in jobs deemed to be comparable. That year, her husband (whom she had married in 1987),
Clarence Thomas, was nominated by President
George H. W. Bush to fill the open seat on the
U.S. Supreme Court left by the retirement of Justice
Thurgood Marshall. During the confirmation hearings, several
Democratic senators questioned whether her job with the Labor Department could create a
conflict of interest for her husband if he were to be seated on the Supreme Court. After her husband was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48, she described the televised scrutiny and confirmation process as a "
trial by fire". Her next job was as a policy analyst for Representative
Dick Armey, who was the
House Republican Conference chairman. By 2000, she was working for
The Heritage Foundation, where she collected résumés for potential presidential appointments in the
George W. Bush administration when the Supreme Court was deciding
Bush v. Gore. She continued to work at The Heritage Foundation during the administration of
George W. Bush, serving as
White House liaison for the
think tank.
2009–2016 In late 2009, Thomas established the nonprofit lobbying group
Liberty Central to organize conservative activists, issue
legislative scorecards for
U.S. Congress members, and be involved in elections. The group was aimed at opposing what Thomas called the "
leftist tyranny'" of President
Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, and "protecting the core founding principles" of the nation. Thomas's
lobbying activities were raised as a potential source of
conflict of interest for her husband. Thomas was interviewed by
Sean Hannity on his
Fox News show
Hannity in June 2010. Asked about potential conflicts between her Liberty Central activities and her husband's position, Thomas replied that "there's a lot of judicial wives and husbands out there causing trouble. I'm just one of many." Liberty Central ceased operations in 2012. In February 2011,
Politico reported that Thomas was the head of a new company, Liberty Consulting, which filed incorporation papers in mid-November 2010. The company's website stated that clients could use Thomas's "experience and connections" to help with "governmental affairs efforts" and political donation strategies.
The Washington Post described Liberty Consulting as "a one-woman shop" where Thomas advised political donors how to direct funds in the post-
Citizens United v. FEC landscape. Also in 2011, Thomas became a special correspondent for
Tucker Carlson's
The Daily Caller.
The Washington Post reported in May 2023 that in 2011 and 2012
Leonard Leo of the
Federalist Society instructed
Kellyanne Conway and her firm The Polling Company to pay $80,000 to Liberty Consulting, a firm owned by Thomas. Leo directed Conway to bill the payments to
Judicial Education Project with "No mention of Ginni, of course" in the paperwork. The
Post could not determine the precise nature of any work Thomas did for either firm, though it noted Judicial Education Project filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a 2012 landmark voting rights case. A longtime friend of the Thomases, Leo told the
Post, "Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni."
2016–present Thomas endorsed
Ted Cruz in the
2016 Republican Party presidential primaries. Thomas has drawn attention for making controversial social media posts;
The Washington Post wrote that she had shared "nakedly partisan, erroneous propaganda". which she founded with the support of
Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor. On May 28, 2020, Trump appointed Thomas as a member of the trust fund board of the
Library of Congress. She is a member of the conservative
Council for National Policy, and in 2019, she became part of its board.
Efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election According to
The New York Times, in the days following the 2020 presidential election, the board of the Council for National Policy issued a call to action to its members to keep
Trump in power, despite his loss. Thomas also emailed Wisconsin state senator
Kathy Bernier and Wisconsin state representative
Gary Tauchen with verbatim copies of the Arizona emails, urging them to set aside the results of the popular vote in their state and instead choose their own electors. Thomas said that she attended the Stop the Steal rally that preceded the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack but left before Trump took the stage at noon. After January 6, baseless claims that Thomas had paid to shuttle demonstrators to
Washington D.C. proliferated online. A year after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, fact checkers again debunked claims that Thomas was one of the organizers of the events of January 6, 2021. After the Capitol attack, Thomas, on a private
email list of her husband's former law clerks, expressed her apologies for contributing to a rift among the group. The internal rift reportedly concerned "pro-Trump postings and former Thomas clerk
John Eastman, who spoke at the rally and represented Trump in some of his failed lawsuits filed to overturn the 2020 election results." An April 2022
Quinnipiac poll found that 52% of Americans said that, in light of Ginni Thomas's texts to Trump's White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows about overturning
the results of the 2020 presidential election, Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from cases about the 2020 election.
Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack In March 2022, texts between Thomas and White House Chief of Staff
Mark Meadows from 2020 were handed to the
Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. The texts show her repeatedly urging Meadows to
overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which she called "the greatest Heist of our History," and repeating conspiracy theories about ballot fraud. She urged that conspiracy theorist attorney
Sidney Powell be retained by the Trump campaign efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In the quoted texts, Thomas described an unknown number of
American citizens that she hoped would be "living
in barges off
GITMO" in accord with the
QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theory that President Biden, his family, and thousands of state and county election officials, administrators, and volunteers successfully orchestrated and performed
a vast conspiracy to rig the 2020 elections across thousands of administrative districts or wards. Public perception of the likelihood of such QAnon-style conspiracy theories influencing a justice of the
U.S. Supreme Court was widespread enough that President Biden was asked what he thought about whether Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from any January 6-related cases. He replied that the answer is for others to determine, The emails were part of Eastman's correspondence related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In an interview with the
Daily Caller, Thomas stated that she "can't wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them." Thomas previously signed on to a letter to House minority leader,
Kevin McCarthy, calling for the removal of
Rep. Liz Cheney and
Rep. Adam Kinzinger from the Republican conference for their participation on the Select Committee and describing the January 6 investigations as "bringing disrespect to our country's rule of law." but one of her attorneys subsequently announced she would speak voluntarily with the committee. The committee interviewed her on September 29. Days after it became known Eastman and Thomas had communicated by email, Eastman posted on his new
Substack blog one email that he captioned, "OMG, Mrs. Thomas asked me to give an update about election litigation to her group. Stop the Presses!" In the December 4, 2020 email, Thomas invited Eastman to speak four days later at a gathering of "Frontliners," which she described as a group of "grassroots state leaders." A private Facebook group named "FrontLiners for Liberty," which included over 50 people and was created in August 2020, showed Thomas as an administrator. The group's front page carried a banner stating, "the enemy of America...is the radical fascist left." After
CNBC asked Thomas about the group, its public pages were either made private or deleted. CNBC also contacted Stephanie Coleman, who was also listed as a group administrator. She is the widow of former Texas solicitor general
Greg Coleman, who had clerked for Clarence Thomas. Numerous photos of her and Thomas are on her personal Facebook page, including one of both of them with former Trump chief strategist
Steve Bannon in December 2016. The Thomas email was among those federal judge
David Carter ordered Eastman to release to the
January 6 committee in June 2022, as Eastman sought to withhold them. Carter found ten documents he ordered released to the committee relating to three December 2020 meetings by a secretive group strategizing about how to overturn the election, which included who he characterized as a "high-profile" leader. Carter noted one email in particular among those he ordered released that contained what he found was likely evidence of a crime. Thomas attended a meeting of FrontLiners for Liberty on March 6, 2021, at which a speaker declared Trump was still the "legitimate president," to enthusiastic applause. Thomas also emailed state lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin, urging them to ignore the results of the 2020 presidential election and vote instead for an alternate slate of electors. According to transcripts of her interviews with the Select Committee on the January 6 attack, Thomas noted that she communicated with Mark Meadows to advocate for Trump's support of Sidney Powell, who was pushing false accusations about hacked voting machines. She further claimed that she did not communicate her election-related activities to her husband, Clarence. Thomas also noted that with regard to her texts to Meadows, she "would take them all back if I could today;" she attributed her communications with Meadows as being the result of her being "emotional" after Trump's election defeat. ==Personal life==