Jan. 6 panel has text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows about keeping Trump in office

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol is in possession of a number of text messages in which former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, talk about keeping President Donald Trump in office, a person familiar with the investigation said.

Thomas and Meadows exchanged the messages came as Trump allies were discussing a legal challenge to the results of the 2020 election. The Supreme Court, in an unsigned opinion in December 2020, dismissed a challenge from Republican state attorneys general to overturn the results.

The text messages were in a trove of documents and messages that Meadows turned over to the Jan. 6 committee before he stopped cooperating with the investigation.

The committee has not spoken with or engaged with Thomas.

CNN first reported that the panel was in possession of the text messages.

A committee spokesperson declined to comment on the content of the texts. The Washington Post and CBS News obtained copies of the messages, which were reviewed by each news outlet and by five people who have seen the committee’s documents.

A source familiar with the materials confirmed the veracity of the messages quoted in the Post report to NBC News.

The 29 messages date from November 2020 to mid-January 2021, the reports said.

In one of the messages, dated Nov. 10 — after news organizations had called the election for Joe Biden — Thomas told Meadows he should encourage Trump not to concede.

“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!...The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” the message is reported to say.

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In another message two weeks later, Meadows is reported to have told Thomas the election battle was a "fight of good versus evil.”

“Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs," Meadows added.

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NBC News has not reviewed the messages. The Post and CBS News reported that none of the messages directly referred to Clarence Thomas or the Supreme Court.

NBC News has reached out to Meadows' attorney and Ginni Thomas for comment.

In an interview with The Washington Free Beacon this month, Ginni Thomas, a staunch Trump supporter, said she and her husband stay in separate lanes. “Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” she said.

In the same interview, Thomas acknowledged that she attended Trump's rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, but said she left before he spoke. She also denied a report in The New York Times that she had been involved in planning the rally.

“I played no role with those who were planning and leading the Jan. 6 events,” Thomas said.

In January, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s effort to stop the National Archives from giving the Jan. 6 committee hundreds of pages of documents from his time in the White House. Clarence Thomas was the lone justice to say the court should have granted Trump’s motion to block the archives from handing the material over while the case is under review.