Ginni Thomas’s reckless attempt to get Arizona state legislators to overturn the election has been public knowledge for months. Now, the Washington Post reports that Thomas used the same tactic in Wisconsin. Urging one state to overturn its election illegally is sufficiently serious. Adding a second state merely reinforces that Thomas’s actions are intolerable and should be formally addressed.
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.
It is hard to argue that Thomas’s Wisconsin effort worsens her actions. Her Arizona effort was more than sufficiently serious. But messaging a second state does make her actions that much more reckless, bringing in new people and possibly conflicting results. It also proves that Thomas wasn’t concerned about some peculiar fact in Arizona. She just wanted Biden’s victory overturned by whatever means necessary.
Thomas left no doubt as to what she wanted:
“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.”
Notice that Thomas just assumes that any irregularities or problems automatically mean that the “clean slate of electors” would be Trump electors. To the Trump cult, the actual election results could not matter less. If needed, states should do their “duty” and go around the results.
Ginni’s insistence that a second state throw out the actual results merely reinforces the fact that something concrete must be done to resolve this obvious conflict of interest.
