Former GOP congressman has 'legitimate concerns' Clarence Thomas was involved in 'push to overturn the election'

Questions surfaced after Justice Clarence Thomas was the only member of the U.S. Supreme Court to oppose the release of Mark Meadows' texts and information to the Jan. 6 committee. It turned out that in those text messages that the justice didn't want revealed were communications with his wife.

Former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA), wrote in his new book that he thinks Justice Thomas is far more involved in his wife Ginni Thomas' 2020 election overthrow attempts.

Riggleman, who left the committee in April, included many of the text messages that had previously been released from Ginni Thomas, along with the note that he had a difficult time trying to get the House Select Committee to sound the alarm on her actions.

"Supreme Court spouses are typically low profile. Ginni’s involvement with political groups had already led to questions about whether Clarence would need to recuse himself in cases with a political component," wrote Riggleman. If Clarence had been in the logs, it would be a much bigger deal than all that. When I began to suspect Ginni and Clarence had texted with Meadows, I put together a technical brief outlining how we might be able to cement the identifications."

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Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) called him to express concern that telling Americans that such an influential figure had gone full-Q would not reflect well on their investigation. Cheney was worried it would turn the whole committee into a political sideshow and overshadow all of the other work the committee was doing. The release of Riggleman's book has left the committee members furious over possible leaks after spending a year with so few.

Riggleman persisted in pressing Cheney to tell Americans about the Thomases.

"The committee needed to show the American people that there was an organized, violent effort to reverse the election—and that there were indications it could have been directed by the White House," he wrote. "Thanks to their prominence, Ginni and Clarence would make a lot of headlines, but those headlines might overwhelm the other important work we were doing."

The conversation with Cheney didn't go well, with the two "type A personalities" duking-out their arguments. Riggleman argued that data wasn't political. It wasn't right or wrong.

"I also thought that, given Clarence’s position and Ginni’s prominence in conservative circles, the American public had to know what she had been up to," argued Riggleman. "Some of the messages went beyond simply cheering Meadows on. It was legitimate for me to have concerns as to whether a Supreme Court justice had been involved in the legally questionable push to overturn the election. Was it possible that one of the country’s nine top judges was on board with an authoritarian interpretation of the Constitution? The implications were overwhelming. Cheney found it all improbable. I think she still had more faith in the institutional GOP than I did at that point."

Riggleman's book, The Breach, is on sale now and Raw Story has complete coverage here.