Republished with permission from Thom Hartmann
Now that Republicans on the Supreme Court have forced a pause in Donald Trump’s federal trial for trying to overthrow the government of the United States and install himself as dictator for life, Jack Smith and his team may have a little time on their hands.
Respectfully, I’d suggest this may be a great time to dust off his identification of Trump’s six main co-conspirators and roll out indictments against each of them. None were president so, even if Trump did have “total immunity for life,” they are all vulnerable to immediate prosecution.
Of the six co-conspirators who’re called out in Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump, the media have figured out the identities of five of them with a pretty high level of certainty. They’re believed to be Rudy Giuliani (#1), John Eastman (#2), Sidney Powell (#3), Jeffrey Clark (#4), and Kenneth Chesebro (#5).
The sixth one is more ambiguous, perhaps intentionally by Smith’s team because of the potentially explosive political ramifications: many people believe it’s Ginni Thomas, the notorious wife of the most corrupt Supreme Court justice in over a century. Other possibilities include Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Moscow-born Boris Epshteyn, or Roger Stone.
Co-conspirator #6 is identified by Smith as “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” Ginni Thomas owns her own political consulting firm and was an open advocate of the fraudulent elector scheme.
Thomas also had access to the private phone numbers and emails for multiple Senators and members of the House who she reached out to between the time Trump was declared the loser of the November 3, 2020 election (November 7th) and the insurrection attempt on January 6, 2021. As Jack Smith wrote:
“Co-Conspirator 6 attempted to confirm phone numbers for six United States Senators whom the Defendant [Trump] had directed Co-Conspirator 1 [Giuliani] to call and attempt to enlist in further delaying the certification.”
And, sure enough, it appears that’s exactly what Ginni Thomas was up to.
Two days after the election, but before it had been called for Biden, she sent a YouTube video titled “TRUMP STING w CIA Director Steve Pieczenik, The Biggest Election Story in History, QFS-BLOCKCHAIN” to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Pieczenik was a far-right crackpot who’d previously claimed that Sandy Hook was a ‘false flag’ operation, but this video (which has since been taken down) claimed the election was stolen.
Thomas wrote to Meadows about the video:
“I hope this is true; never heard anything like this before, or even a hint of it. Possible??? Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states.”
She followed that up with a second message to Meadows:
“Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”
But Ginni Thomas was just getting started.
On November 19th, hours after Sidney Powell held a press conference to claim the election was stolen via voting machine fraud, Thomas texted Meadows:
“Suggestion: You need to buck up your team on the inside, Mark. The lower level insiders are scared, fearful or sending out signals of hopelessness vs an awareness of the existential threat to America right now. You can buck them up, strengthen their spirits. Monica Crowley may have a sense of this [from] her Nixon days.”
After Meadows replied, Thomas wrote:
“You guys fold, the evil just moves fast down underneath you all. Lots of intensifying threats coming to ACB [Amy Coney Barrett] and others.”
As court case after court case went against Trump, and Republican officials in swing states like Georgia were speaking out loudly to say that Trump had, indeed, lost the election by a huge margin, Thomas continued her pressure campaign. On November 24th, she texted Meadows:
“I can’t see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud. Just going with one more thing with no frickin consequences… the whole coup and now this… we just cave to people wanting Biden to be anointed? Many of us can’t continue the GOP charade.”
In January, after Vice President Pence refused to block the counting of Electoral College votes for Joe Biden (and it was obvious to the whole world that Trump had lost by 7 million votes), she texted a somewhat having-it-both-ways message:
“We are living through what feels like the end of America. Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in a listening mode to see where to fight with our teams. Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!! Amazing times. The end of Liberty.”
The indictment says that co-conspirator #6 was involved in the fake elector scheme. Thomas’ involvement in that scheme apparently started immediately after the election. As The Washington Post noted:
“New documents show that Thomas indeed used the platform to reach many lawmakers simultaneously. On Nov. 9, she sent identical emails to 20 members of the Arizona House and seven Arizona state senators. That represents more than half of the Republican members of the state legislature at the time.
“The message, just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, urged lawmakers to ‘stand strong in the face of political and media pressure’ and claimed that the responsibility to choose electors was ‘yours and yours alone.’ They had ‘power to fight back against fraud’ and ‘ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen,’ the email said.”
But that was just the opening. Thomas spent weeks aggressively pushing the message that the election was stolen from Trump and the lawmakers must find a way to keep Trump in the White House.
On December 13th, Thomas blasted out an email to 22 members of the US House and one US senator. It referenced a video that called on lawmakers to ignore voters and simply make Trump president for a second term. It read:
From: Ginni Thomas noreply@freeroots.com
Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2020 10:20 AM
To: Russell Bowers
Subject: Lawmakers, Please Watch This Video!
Dear Representative Bowers,
As state lawmakers, you have the Constitutional power and authority to protect the integrity of our elections – and we need you to exercise that power now! Never before in our nation’s history have our elections been so threatened by fraud and unconstitutional procedures. That’s why the nation’s eyes are now on you. Before you choose your state’s Electors, I ask you to do two things:
(1) Please watch this 2-minute video! youtube.com/watch?v=2–_yte_SiE
(2) And then, please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead. Thank you,
Ginni Thomas
Indicting these six Trump co-conspirators would not only keep the story of their openly criminal (and arguably traitorous) activity in the front of the nation’s consciousness, it would also satisfy the simple demand of justice that criminals—particularly criminals who tried to take down our government—are held to account.
And even if Ginni Thomas is not co-conspirator #6, her case still requires a serious examination by the FBI and DOJ. She was clearly—by her own words—in the thick of the fake elector scheme, which was a blatant felony.
This would also inform the Republicans on the Supreme Court, who just tied a metaphorical rope to Jack Smith’s ankle and tossed the anvil on the other end into a lake, that we’re all paying attention to their treachery.
Smith and the Department of Justice are not without tools and resources right now. The question is whether they’re willing to do battle with a group of people who are openly working to manipulate the system to the benefit of Trump and his fascist cronies.
It’s time for Smith and company to up their game.
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann, one of America’s leading public intellectuals and the country’s #1 progressive talk show host, writes fresh content six days a week. The Monday-Friday “Daily Take” articles are free to all, while paid subscribers receive a Saturday summary of the week’s news and, on Sunday, a chapter excerpt from one of his books.