One week after the 2018 midterms, President Donald Trump hosted a private lunch with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas.

She used her face time with Trump to cajole him about her floundering efforts to install friends and allies into plum administration positions, two former senior White House officials told CNN, one of whom said Trump encouraged her to get in touch with his staff about the matter.

But when Ginni Thomas contacted Trump’s aides inside the Presidential Personnel Office, her requests were slow-walked, former officials said. Fearful that she might turn Trump against his own criminal justice reform bill, which she fervently opposed, they delayed granting her ask for a sit-down meeting with Trump, while the legislation made its way through Congress…

Sources said Ginni Thomas leveraged existing connections to conservative figures and sought inroads with Trump staffers, to become a recurring presence at his White House. She became part of a larger group of Republican activists who met in the White House on a near-monthly basis, though not with Trump, a source told CNN. Along the way, sources said she became a persistent nuisance to some of the Trump aides tasked with managing her entreaties.