Virginia Thomas

When Congressman Daub took office in 1981, Thomas moved to Washington, D.C., and worked in his office for 18 months.[4][5][6] After completing her degree at Creighton University School of Law (1983), she worked one more year for Daub in Washington as his Legislative Director.[6] From 1985 to 1989, she was employed as an attorney and labor relations specialist at the United States Chamber of Commerce,[5][8][9] attending congressional hearings where she lobbied on behalf of the interests of the business community.[5] Her advocacy included arguing against the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which requires larger employers to provide temporary unpaid leave to employees to care for a new child or during a serious personal or family illness.[10] In 1989, she became Manager of Employee Relations at the Chamber of Commerce.[11]

Virginia Thomas at her husband's swearing in as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

In 1991, Thomas returned to government service in the Legislative Affairs Office of the United States Department of Labor,[12][13][14] where she argued against comparable-worth legislation that would have mandated equal pay for women and men in jobs deemed to be comparable.[15][16]

That year, her husband, Clarence Thomas, was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to fill the open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court left by the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall.[17] She attended the contentious Senate confirmation hearings and stood by her husband as he was accused of sexual harassment.[18]

During the confirmation hearings, several Democratic Senators claimed that her job with the Labor Department might create a conflict of interest for her husband if he was seated on the Supreme Court.[19] After her husband was narrowly confirmed by a majority vote of 52 to 48,[20] Mrs. Thomas described the televised scrutiny and confirmation process as a "trial by fire".[21][22]

Her next job was as a Policy Analyst for Congressman Dick Armey, who was then the Republican House Conference Chairman. In 1994, conflict of interest was raised again while Thomas was working for Armey.[23][24]

By 2000, she was working for the Heritage Foundation. Conflict of interest was raised yet again because she was collecting résumés for potential Presidential appointments in the George W. Bush Administration when the Supreme Court was deciding Bush v. Gore.[25][26] She continued to work at the Heritage Foundation during the administration of George W. Bush, serving as the White House Liaison for the think tank.[27]

In late 2009, Thomas started a nonprofit lobbying group, Liberty Central, to organize conservative activists, issue score cards for Congress members, and be involved in elections.[28] The group is aimed at opposing what Thomas has called the leftist "tyranny" of President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats and "protecting the core founding principles" of the nation.[29] Thomas was interviewed by Sean Hannity on his Fox News show Hannity in June 2010. When asked about potential conflicts between her Liberty Central activities and her husband's position, Thomas replied, "there's a lot of judicial wives and husbands out there causing trouble. I'm just one of many."[30]

In February 2011, Politico reported that Thomas was the head of a new company, Liberty Consulting, which filed incorporation papers in mid-November 2010. The company's website states that clients can use Thomas's "experience and connections" to help "with "governmental affairs efforts" and political donation strategies.[31] The Washington Post described Liberty Consulting as "a one-woman shop" where Thomas advised political donors how to direct funds in the post-Citizens United landscape.[32]

In July 2013, Thomas was identified as a key member of Groundswell, a coalition of right-wing activists and journalists attempting to make political change behind the scenes through lobbying of high-level contacts.[33]

Thomas endorsed Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican primaries.[32] After Cruz dropped out, she supported Donald Trump.[32]

Thomas has served on the advisory council of Turning Point USA.[34][35]

Thomas has stirred controversy due to her inflammatory political rhetoric and promotion of conspiracy theories. In 2018, she shared Facebook posts that characterized California as a war zone, alleged voter fraud by Democrats in four elections, described the teenage survivors of the Parkland shooting "dangerous to the survival of our nation" (because they advocated for gun control) and accused President Obama and Hillary Clinton of being involved in wiretapping then-candidate Donald Trump. In 2017, she held a speech saying the left wants "to extinguish our rights," that the left "moves its forces across our country," and that the NFL was "mainstreaming anti-Americanism" because some NFL players kneeled during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial discrimination. She harshly criticized Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell as "useful idiots" for "LiberalFascists" because they did not condemn violence on the left during the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. She has made videos for the Daily Caller where she wondered whether "cultural Marxists have already won in our country."[32]

On February 23, 2020, Axios reported that right-wing activists had compiled the names of individuals who were deemed to be disloyal to President Donald Trump into a list. As the leading figure in a right-wing network that works to recommend people as staffers at the White House, the article stated that Thomas had been advising Trump to purge the "snakes" who were disloyal to him from the government. It was revealed that she had sent a memo to Trump directly in the preceding year and a personnel office for the president had deemed some of her suggestions to be inappropriate candidates as White House faculty. After Trump was acquitted by Senate in his trial of impeachment, it was alleged that Trump would revisit some of her recommendations in subsequent pursuit of vengeance against those who testified against him throughout his impeachment.[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]

On May 28, 2020, Trump appointed Thomas as a member of the trust fund board of the Library of Congress.[44][45]

In October 2020, shortly before the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, Thomas advanced the conspiracy theory via social media that George Soros "is really running the Democratic Party." Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, and The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that "Republican officials and activists, as well as far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists, regularly assert with scant or no evidence that he is secretly funding, or in control of, a broad array of liberal causes, or otherwise out to undermine the United States government." And, that "[t]he idea that rich Jews are conspiring to secretly control world leaders is an age-old anti-Semitic stereotype."[46][47][48]

In January 2021, Thomas took to Facebook to cheer the 'Save America March' that preceded the storming of the U.S. Capitol building.[49][50] The Washington Post reported that after the violence and deaths resulting from the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Thomas, on a private email listserv called "Thomas Clerk World," expressed her wish to apologize for contributing to the rift among a group of former clerks of her husband, Clarence Thomas.[51] The internal rift reportedly concerned "pro-Trump postings and former Thomas clerk John Eastman, who spoke at the rally and represented Trump in some of his failed lawsuits filed to overturn the election results."[51]

In the 1980s, while a congressional aide, Thomas took training with the self-awareness program Lifespring.[60] In 1987, she related to The Washington Post that, during her training several years earlier, she had been "confused and troubled" by lessons such as one where trainees were told to disrobe to bikinis and bathing suits then "made fun of fat people's bodies and ridiculed one another with sexual questions".[60] After realizing that membership in her Lifespring group was separating her from her family, friends, and co-workers, Thomas began what proved to be a difficult and months-long process of breaking away.[60] At one point, she hid in another part of the U.S. to avoid a constant barrage of high-pressure phone calls from Lifespring members, who felt they had a duty to keep her in the organization.[5][60][61][62]

Thomas ultimately came to believe that Lifespring was a cult.[5] After leaving the group in 1985, she sought counseling and joined the Cult Awareness Network.[5][63] She became a critic of controversial religious groups, speaking on panels and organizing anti-cult workshops for Congressional staffers in 1986 and 1988.[5] In a 1991 interview, Thomas remarked, "I was once in a group that used mind control techniques"; and she called its members "pretty scary people."[64]