Ginni Thomas has long been active in conservative politics, but had a relatively low profile until recent months.

She first attracted attention for founding Liberty Central, a non-profit group that she envisioned as forming a bridge between the conservative establishment and the anti-establishment tea party movement.

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POLITICO reported that the group received a $550,000 infusion from two anonymous contributions while the Supreme Court was deliberating over the Citizens United case.

Ginni Thomas stepped down from Liberty Central in December after controversy over a message she left on a voice mail requesting an apology from Anita Hill, the woman who accused her husband of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings for the high court in 1991.

Last month, Thomas had to amend 13 years’ worth of financial disclosure reports to indicate the sources – though not amounts – of his wife’s income after Common Cause raised questions about his omission of the information.

More recently, both Thomases were criticized after POLITICO revealed that Ginni Thomas had started a lobbying group that bills itself as using her “experience and connections” to help clients “with “governmental affairs efforts” and political donation strategies.

Earlier this month, 74 House Democrats signed a letter asking Thomas to recuse himself from any cases related to last year’s Democratic healthcare overhaul bill partly because of his wife’s lobbying.

“From what we have already seen, the line between your impartiality and you and your wife’s financial stake in the overturn of health care reform is blurred,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote to Justice Thomas, citing his failure to report his wife’s income in his disclosure filings over the past decade.

Some legal experts have dismissed the demands that Thomas recuse himself.

Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California Irvine who sharply criticized the Citizen United decision, nonetheless called Common Cause’s letter to the Justice Department, which also mentioned fellow Justice Antonin Scalia’s attendance at a 2007 Koch retreat, “an unwarranted attack on the ethics of the Justices.”

Leonard Leo, a Federalist Society executive and longtime friend of the Thomases who sits on the board of Liberty Central, told POLITICO on Sunday that Thomas’s remarks were similar to those he’s delivered at past events.

“I’ve known the Thomases for over 20 years, and have heard the Justice speak dozens and dozens of times,” said Leo, who moderated a question-and-answer session with Thomas after Saturday’s speech. “What he said last night about both his wife’s integrity for standing up for what she believes in and the duty of all of us to stand up for our liberty, even in the face of the most personalized attacks, is no different from what he has said in countless other appearances going all the way back to 1991, and probably even before that.”

Thomas’s message was not geared towards attacking critics, Leo said, but rather “motivating young law students to stand up for what they believe in, even if that means being reviled and having to pay a price for it.”

Another person affiliated with the Federalist Society who’s frequently heard Thomas speak at its events and was at the dinner Saturday said the Thomases “couldn’t have been more happy and fun-loving with all of us,” spending about an hour both before and after the event talking to students and posing for pictures.