Ginni Thomas urged Rep. Shawnna Bolick and Speaker Rusty Bowers to pick new electors after 2020, AP reports
Based on reporting by Mark Sherman and Jonathan J. Cooper for the Associated Press, published May 20, 2022.
After the 2020 election, conservative activist Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, emailed Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Rep. Shawnna Bolick urging them to choose their own slate of presidential electors, the Associated Press reported. The emails were first reported by The Washington Post; the AP obtained them under Arizona's public records law.
Thomas argued that the results giving Joe Biden the state were marred by fraud, claims the AP described as unsubstantiated. In the days after news organizations called the race for Biden, she urged the two lawmakers to pick "a clean slate of Electors." She emailed them again on Dec. 13, one day before the electors formally voted, telling them they had the constitutional power to protect the integrity of elections and needed to use it.
Bowers rejected the idea of replacing Arizona's electors soon after the election. The following year, the AP reported, Bolick filed a bill that would have let the Legislature throw out the result of any presidential election, for any reason, and name new electors. Bolick has said her bill would have required a two-thirds vote, making it more bipartisan, but the AP noted that the bill's text called for a simple majority. Bowers essentially killed it before it came to a vote.
When the AP published its report, Bolick was running for Arizona secretary of state, a win that would have made her the state's top elections official. The AP said the emails show Thomas played a bigger role than had been known in the push to overturn Biden's victory.