Trump lawyers thought Clarence Thomas would be key to subverting result of 2020 election, emails show

Justice Clarence Thomas was, from the beginning, the member of the Supreme Court’s nine-justice bench whom the Trump campaign identified as an ally, according to new documents.

A court’s release of emails between two of Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign legal team members illustrates how the masterminds of the effort to delay the certification of election results in Georgia and other states thought that Mr Thomas stood apart from his colleagues and would keep an open mind to the campaign’s baseless and evidence-free claims of fraud.

It’s a revelation that may be less stunning than it would have been had his wife, Ginni Thomas, not found herself at the centre of the January 6 committee’s investigation into persons who helped Donald Trump try and pressure state legislatures around the country to subvert the election results. Ms Thomas is known to have aided in what Democrats like Nancy Pelosi have openly referred to as a coup attempt by emailing lawmakers in at least two states with the hopes of convincing them to take actions that some would testify they believed was illegal.

The exchange in question was between John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro; Mr Eastman is one of the members of Mr Trump’s legal team now thought to be a target of the investigation being headed up by Georgia state authorities into the Trump campaign’s efforts there to overturn the election.

“Realistically, our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress, is from Thomas — do you agree, Prof. Eastman?” Mr Chesebro wrote.

Mr Thomas’s decision to not abstain from ruling on cases related to the Trump election fraud conspiracy effort has become a major sore point for critics of the court who say that the justice has sacrficed his legitimacy as a legal arbiter in order to help the former president.

The Supreme Court has refused to respond to any critcism on that matter, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has even minimised the dispute and tried to play it off as a simple difference of political opinion. Meanwhile, polls indicate that the Supreme Court’s status as an institution is viewed unfavorably by more Americans than has ever been recorded before.

Mr Thomas’s wife testified before the January 6 committee last month and reportedly reiterated to the committee’s members that she still believes the lies and conspiracies spread about the 2020 election by Donald Trump’s team — even following the revelation from lawmakers that Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s top lawyer on the fraud effort, had acknowledged that the campaign did not have evidence to back up what it was claiming.