Unannounced texts were sent by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Republican Representative Chip Roy of Texas to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The exchange of texts shows that both members of Congress initially supported the legal challenges before the election, but eventually broke down the efforts and tactics used by Trump and his team.
But shortly after the election, both men encouraged Trump to continue fighting.
In a series of texts to Meadows on November 7, Lee offered his “unequivocal support for you to exhaust all legal and constitutional remedies available to restore Americans’ faith in our elections.”
Lee continued: “This battle is for the fundamental justice and integrity of our electoral system. The nation depends on your continued determination. Stay strong and keep fighting, Mr President.”
Also on November 7, Roy wrote to Meadows: “We need ammunition. We need examples of fraud. We need them this weekend.”
In a statement to CNN, Lee’s director of communications, Lee Lonsbury, said: “I would like to emphasize that Senator Lee was completely transparent,” noting that Lee called for an investigation into allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, but ultimately recognized Biden as president-elect and voted to certify the election results on January 6th.
Roy Nate’s communications director, Madden, told CNN that the text messages “speak for themselves.”
Meadows’ lawyer did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
A spokesman for the elected committee declined to comment.
A source familiar with the committee’s work told CNN that Lee’s texts reflected that he was a cheerleader before he objected. He uses legal language to push out conspiracy theorists into Trump’s orbit. “
“Can you help her in?”
For several days in November, Lee lobbied Meadows for access to lawyer Sidney Powell for Trump.
“Sydney Powell says she needs to come in to see the president, but they keep her away from him,” Lee wrote to Meadows on Nov. 7. “Obviously she has a strategy to keep things alive and get a few states back in the game. Can you help get her in?”
Lee then sent Meadows Powell’s cell phone number and email.
On November 9, Lee again pressed Meadows for Powell, calling her a “straight shooter.”
That same day, Roy warned Meadows of Trump’s approach, sending him a message: “We need to get the president to soften rhetoric and take a firm, intelligent, and effective approach to the legal challenge, without resorting to throwing wild desperate haystacks or turning his base into conspiracy madness. “
Then came the infamous November 19 press conference, where members of Trump’s legal team – including Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis – exposed a series of false allegations and conspiracy theories about alleged voter fraud.
The messages began to take on a more critical tone.
“Hey, bro, we need a substance or people will break,” Roy wrote on November 19, hours after the press conference. Two hours later, Lee sent a message to Meadows with serious concerns, saying he was “worried about Powell’s press conference.”
Lee told Meadows: “The potential responsibility for slandering the president is significant here.
“For the campaign and for the president personally.
“Unless Powell can support everything she said that I doubt she can.
Meadows replied, “I agree. I’m very worried.”
The press conference came as Trump’s legal losses accumulated in his efforts to challenge results in key rocking states.
From Powell to Eastman
By the end of November, Lee withdrew from Powell and began promoting right-wing attorney John Eastman, whom a California federal judge said last month may have planned a crime with Trump because they tried to break certification for the 6th Presidential Congress. January. elections, calling it a “coup in search of legal theory.”
Roy also privately sent messages to Meadows with Eastman’s support and criticized Giuliani.
“Have you talked to John Eastman?” Roy sent a message on November 22. “Get Eastman to submit documents to the election commission …
“Get data in the public domain.
“Damn Rudy has to shut up.”
By December, both Republicans were expressing serious concerns about Meadows over a plan to challenge the January 6th election certification.
On December 16, Lee asked Meadows for guidance: “If you want senators to object, we need to hear from you about this, ideally to get guidance on what arguments to make.
“I think we have already passed the point where we can expect someone to do it without any direction and a strong argument.
On December 31, Roy expressed even greater concern in a text to Meadows.
“The president must abolish all. This is the only way. If we replace the will of the states through electorate with congressional voting every four years … we have destroyed the Electoral College … Sincerely,” Roy wrote.
At the time, Trump and his allies were working behind the scenes to lure parts of the federal government into efforts to cancel the election. This included urging Justice Department officials, including then-Attorney General William Barr, to investigate fraud, even after the agency said there was none. Trump also put strong pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the January 6 election.
In a January 3 text to Meadows, Lee argued that Trump’s efforts to get the United States to send alternative electoral lists to Congress were not legitimate.
“All I know is that it will end badly for the president unless we have our country’s constitution,” Lee wrote in a note to Meadows. “And unless those states submit new lists of Trump voters in accordance with state law, we do not,” Lee wrote to Meadows.
As CNN previously reported, the plan to replace authentic voters with fake ones in several different states was organized by allies of the former president and monitored by his then-lawyer Giuliani.
None of these alternative groups of Trump-backed voters received approval from government officials or were presented to Congress.
While Lee and Roy voted to certify the election results in Biden’s favor, more than 100 of their Republican counterparts in the House of Representatives and the Senate did not. Chief among them were Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, both of whom Lee called to Meadows in his texts.
“I have serious concerns about the way my friend Ted is making this effort,” Lee wrote to Meadows. “This will not benefit the president.”
Lee added that unless new, competing voters are proposed in accordance with state law, the net effect “could help people like Ted and Josh to the detriment of DJT.”
When January 6 finally came, neither Lee nor Roy joined their colleagues in objecting to the results of the 2020 presidential election.
After the violence erupted and Congress returned to its session, Roy said in the hall, “The president should never have made some Americans believe in something that simply cannot be.”
He also sent a message to Meadows: “This is nonsense.
“Fix it now.”
Add Comment