Lobbyist and promoter of Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” Ginni Thomas, is uniting with ex-Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell and two dozen others from the far-right to attack and oppose GOP Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy‘s attempt to become Speaker of the House.
In a joint letter from the Conservative Action Project, Thomas, the spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Mitchell, and the other 24 signatories assail McCarthy’s leadership.
“Conservative organizations and the millions of grassroots conservatives we represent are united in our support of the 20 courageous members of Congress seeking to change the status quo in Washington,” the letter reads. Those 20 have voted against McCarthy for Speaker.
“Rather than engage them in a good faith negotiation, Rep. Kevin McCarthy has instead maligned both the requests and the messengers. He has publicly and through proxies leveled attacks against members of his own party, including threatening to deny committee assignments for those who continue to oppose him. Moreover, he has failed to answer for, or commit to halting, his coordinated efforts in the 2022 elections to promote moderate Republican candidates over conservatives, it charges.
“Because of this, he has thus far failed to garner the 218 votes necessary to lead the House GOP conference in three separate rounds of voting, it adds, although as of now the McCarthy has lost five votes. “The job of the Speaker is to garner consensus among disparate factions of the party, and unite them.”
The Conservative Action Project, founded in 2008, was behind the 2010 “Mount Vernon Statement,” an attack on the left that wrongly claims the U.S. Constitution promotes a conservative point of view. It accused the federal government of acting “with little concern for the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.” There were Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate at the time, and Barack Obama was President.
Cleta Mitchell participated in Donald Trump’s infamous phone call to Brad Raffensperger, during which he pressured the Georgia Secretary of State to “find 11,780 votes.” Trump is under criminal investigation over that call. Last year The New York Times reported Mitchell had been subpoenaed by investigators.
Mitchell, an anti-LGBTQ activist, was also subpoenaed by the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
She “participated in efforts to prevent, delay, or overturn election results,” and “promoted false claims of election fraud to Members of Congress,” the Committee’s chairman Bennie Thompson charged last year.
Among the other signatories are Kenneth Blackwell of the Family Research Council, which appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups. Also, David Bossie, the conservative activist and lobbyist who heads Citizens United, the group that won the Supreme Court case that has led to massive amounts of dark money in American politics.