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Ginni Thomas said in a new book that Anita Hill’s allegations against her husband were “deeply offensive.”
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“I know the man,” she told “Created Equal” co-editor Michael Pack. “I know the people in his life.”
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Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment when they worked together in the 1980s.
Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, calls Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment against her husband “deeply offensive” in a recently published book.
In the book“Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” edited by Michael Pack and Mark Paoletta, Ginni Thomas sat down for interviews with Pack in 2017 and 2018, in what became an expanded addition to the documentary of 2020 with the same name.
During her conversation with Pack, Ginni Thomas spoke of her first acquaintance with Hill, a lawyer who had worked with Clarence Thomas in the early 1980s at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
“Anita Hill worked with Clarence at the request of his friend Gil Hardy in the Education Department, and then she wanted to follow him to EEOC where he would become its president. She wanted to continue her career working with him. And Clarence stood by and I honestly never assumed there was a problem with Anita Hill and all the other people he employed and helped,” she said.
She continued, “He was an advocate against sexual harassment at EEOC. He worked on policies and disciplined employees who crossed the line. So sexual harassment and Anita Hill was never something he would have thought up until the FBI was on our doorstep saying that she made allegations.”
Ginni Thomas told Pack it was “devastating” for her husband to hear of Hill’s accusations, because he had considered her a friend. He has always maintained that he did not act improperly with Hill.
“Clarence was shocked that Anita Hill was the person who made the accusations for helping her,” she said. “So it was astonishing to him, devastating, that she would be the one to come out of the shadows to attack him in any way.”
Ginni Thomas then said she was sure of her husband’s character and dismissed Hill’s testimony as fiction.
“I know the man. I know the people in his life. I know how he is with everyone in our world and everyone in the workplace,” she said.
“So to hear someone, one person, come out of the dark recesses of her imagination and tell a story about him that contradicted every other person’s experience with my husband was highly insulting,” she added.
Clarence Thomas was eventually confirmed to the Supreme Court through the Senate in a 52-48 vote.
Ginni Thomas in 2010 reached out to Hill and the Brandeis University professor left a voicemail asking her to apologize for speaking out to her husband.
“I’d like you to consider an apology and a full explanation of why you did what you did to my husband,” she said in voicemail, according to The New York Times† “So think about it and definitely pray for this and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay, have a nice day.”
Hill told The Times that the message was “certainly inappropriate”.
After Ginni Thomas confirmed she had left the message, she said in a statement via a publicist that “an insult was never intended”.
Hill, however, stuck to her testimony, telling The Times: “I understand it wasn’t offensive, but she can’t ask for an apology without suggesting I’ve done something wrong, and that’s offensive.”
In recent years, and especially after the death of close friend and fellow judge Antonin Scalia in 2016, Clarence Thomas has emerged as a pillar of the court’s now dominant conservative wing.
But justice now faces calls to… resign or to retreat of cases related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, due to his wife’s fault documented talks with Trump allies in support of efforts to reverse President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Read the original article Business Insider