Photo via U.S. Senate, @SethCotlar/Twitter
April 15, 2022, 10:07 am
Text messages between Republican Senator Mike Lee, Rep. Chip Roy, and White House chief of staff under Donald Trump Mark Meadows recently revealed by the House January 6 committee reek of desperation for any actual proof of 2020 election fraud. They also show just how far these high-ranking Republicans were willing to go to subvert the legal U.S. election system and install Trump for a second term after the results went solidly in favor of Joe Biden.
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“We need ammo. We need fraud examples. We need it this weekend,” wrote Roy to Meadows on November 7, 2020.
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On the same day, a text from Lee to Meadows offered his “unequivocal support for you to exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy at your disposal to restore Americans faith in our elections.”
Later, however, he had to beg for any shred of evidence he could use to justify that unequivocal support as every avenue led them to a dead end.
“Just give me something to work with,” said Lee. “Please tell me what I should be saying.”
Roy was also the Republican who texted that they were “driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic” on January 1, 2021 — a text that was revealed in December but not attributed to any specific individual until now.
Lee, meanwhile, was pushing Meadows to give lawyer Sidney Powell access to Trump, saying that she had “a strategy to keep things alive and put several states back in play.” That strategy was laid out during the wild news conference on November 19 in which Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Jenna Ellis spewed conspiracy theories and lies without evidence for 90 minutes straight.
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A few hours after that circus act and Roy was texting Meadows again for anything real they could use to further Trump’s agenda.
“Hey brother – we need substance or people are going to break,” he wrote.
Lee was also concerned about the potential that the lawyer trio could be setting Trump up for lawsuits in the future with their blatant lying.
“The potential defamation liability for the president is significant here,” Lee texted Meadows. “For the campaign and for the president personally.”
In the days leading up to January 6, Lee and Roy had finally gotten past begging and were stating plainly that if Trump and his pack of clown lawyers went ahead with their plan without anything to back it up, they could break U.S. democracy.
“The president should call everyone off,” said Roy to Meadows. “It’s the only path. If we substitute the will of states through electors with a vote by congress every 4 years… we have destroyed the electoral college… Respectfully.”
A big part of this plan was to replace enough delegates in the electoral college with people who were staunchly loyal to Trump to the point that they would be willing to disrupt and attempt to overturn the election, but they were unable to pull it off legally.
“I only know that this will end badly for the President unless we have the Constitution on our side,” Lee wrote Meadows on January 3. “And unless these states submit new slates of Trump electors pursuant to state law, we do not.”
*First Published: April 15, 2022, 10:07 am
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