Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) worked hard to overthrow the 2020 election and keep President Donald Trump in power before finally giving up when there was no widespread fraud and his approach to the state for by-elections was proven. , according to texts. Lee sent the text to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who handed it over to a House committee investigating Trump’s attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. CNN examined Lee and his text. MP Chip Roy (R-Tex.) sent the Meadows and reported to them on Friday. In a text message to Meadows in November, Lee strongly supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the election through legal challenges, offering his “unequivocal support” on November 7, 2020 – the day news outlets portrayed Joe Biden as the winner. to exhaust all legal and constitutional solutions at your disposal to restore American faith in our elections. “ “This does not have to be a dichotomy between (1) an immediate concession and (2) a destruction of the credibility of the electoral process,” Lee wrote to Meadows that day. Lee made it clear that he was working hard to help Trump, saying in a text that he was spending “14 hours a day” trying to reach out to state lawmakers seeking anything to give Congress a reason not to vote for Biden. in January. 6, 2021 and confirms his victory. “We need something from the state legislatures to make it legal and to have hopes of winning. “Even if they can not come together, it may be enough if the majority of them are willing to sign a statement showing how they would vote,” Lee wrote in a statement. A representative of the January 6 committee did not comment directly. Senator Lee Lonsberry’s spokesman said in a statement Friday that the text messages “tell the same story as Senator Lee from the Senate floor on the day he voted to validate the election results” on January 6, 2021. “[The texts] “Tell the story of an American senator who fulfilled his duty to Utah and the American people by following the Constitution,” Lonsbury said. Lee’s remarks at the Senate that day, however, did not reflect what the text showed: his frustration with Trump after the president criticized him at a Jan. 4 rally in Georgia for not doing enough to reverse the results. his grievances for his Republican counterpart Senators Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) and his recommendations to the Meadows to seek the help of attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman. “I spend 14 hours a day for the last week trying to figure it out. “Getting him to shoot me like that in such a public environment without even asking me about it is quite discouraging,” Lee wrote in the Meadows. Meadows apologized and said Trump would call. In another text to the Meadows, Lee expressed his frustration with Cruz and Howley, arguing that the two supported Trump’s efforts only to their advantage and to Trump’s detriment. Lee said that if the effort did not create a competitive voter list under state law, it would hurt Trump. Howley had announced in December 2020 that he would object to the counting of elections. Cruz and 10 other senators announced on January 2 that they would object. “I have serious concerns about the way my friend Ted is making this effort,” Lee told the Meadows. “This will not be in the president’s favor.” “I only know that this will end badly for the President, unless we have the Constitution on our side,” Li added. “And if these states do not submit new Trump voter data under state law, we do not.” Lee did not mention any of these concerns or frustrations during his Jan. 6 speech. Lee’s willingness to support Trump’s campaign to overthrow the election is remarkable given his experience – he served as Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and was mentioned as a possible candidate for the Supreme Court when Trump ran in 2016. Lee will be re-elected this year and received Trump approval earlier this month. The former president praised Lee while mocking one of his rivals, the independent conservative Evan McMullin, calling him “McMuffin”. Trump also dealt an indirect blow to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a favorite target. Romney has twice voted in favor of Trump’s conviction on referral charges. Months before the election, Romney has not backed Lee. One of Li’s Republican nominees, former Utah MP Becky Edwards, said in a statement that the senator “enabled those seeking power to stay in power, regardless of the consequences.” “Once Lee realized the seriousness of Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election, he should have stopped investigating the legitimacy of such actions and stopped pressuring local lawmakers,” Edwards said. McMalin, who was a candidate for the White House in 2016, challenged Lee’s decisions on Twitter. “Why did Sen. Mike Lee advise fake legal efforts to overthrow the 2020 election?” McMalin asked. “And why did he hide these plans from both the public and the FBI in the days before January 6?” Lee’s writings show that, shortly after the election, Lee was the one who encouraged Meadows to give Powell access to Trump, saying he would help him advance the legal challenges. He provided Powell with Meadows’s contact information, and at first it seemed certain that Powell could help advance the Trump case. “Obviously he has a strategy to keep things alive and bring many states back into the game. Can you help her get in? ” Lee sent a message. Two days later, Lee reassured Powell, calling her a “powerful sniper.” As the election results were being counted in November, Powell made all sorts of false allegations of electoral fraud. He joined other members of Trump’s legal team – including Rudolf Giuliani and Jenna Ellis – in a Republican National Committee press conference on November 19, 2020, in which he falsely claimed that Trump “won by a landslide.” “We will prove it,” Powell said. In the past, Powell has not only failed to present substantial evidence to support her allegations of electoral fraud, but has also faced multiple legal challenges, financial penalties and possible acquittals. Two hours after that press conference, Lee began to express his doubts to Powell. The senator, in a message to Meadows, said he was “concerned about Powell’s press conference.” “The potential liability for defamation of the president is significant here,” Lee said. “For the campaign and for the president personally… Unless Powell can support everything he said, which I doubt he can.” Meadows agreed, sending a message: “Very worried.” By the end of November, Lee had resigned from Powell and instead began encouraging Meadows to hire right-wing lawyer John Eastman. But confidence in Eastman did not last long, as, in mid-December, Lee began to cast doubt on Meadows’ plan to challenge the legitimacy of the Jan. 6 election. “If you want senators to object, we need to hear from you about ideally receiving some guidance on the arguments we need to raise,” Lee told Meadows on December 16, 2020. “I think we have now reached the point where we can expect someone to do it without any direction and strong argument “. As of Jan. 3, Lee had told Meadows that Trump’s attempt to ask the states to send alternative voter lists to Congress was likely to fail. “I do not think the president understands the distinction between what we can do and what he would like us to do,” he told Meadows that day, warning that “all efforts could fail miserably.” Hours after a mob invaded the Capitol, Lee voted to validate the election results and Biden’s victory.
