Above: Three of the Coup Plotters: Rep. Chip Roy, Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Sen. Mike Lee, all Tea Party Republicans who engaged in a seditious conspiracy for the insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Who can ever forget the idiotic speech given by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in 2013, in which he portrayed the Tea Party Republicans who had joined him on the floor in opposition to “Obamacare” as the Rebel Alliance who stood tall in the face of the Galactic Empire, which he characterized as the Washington establishment.
“I wondered if at some point we were going to see a tall gentleman in a mechanical breathing apparatus come forward and say in a deep voice, ‘Mike Lee, I am your father,’” Cruz jokingly said in reference to Darth Vader. “Just like in the Star Wars movies, the Empire will strike back, but at the end of the day I think the Rebel Alliance — I think the people — will prevail.”
In 2021, Sen. Ted Cruz was the Republican Senator “point man” for the seditious insurrection on January 6, in which he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in order to install Donald Trump as our first GQP authoritarian despotic leader.
But it turns out that his fellow “Teabagger” Sen Mike Lee (R-UT) also had an early hand in the seditious conspiracy for which he has gotten a pass from the media (until now) because he later voted to certify the 2020 election in the end.
Note: A defendant charged with conspiracy can raise the defense of abandonment or withdrawal. But in order to do so, a defendant must show that he affirmatively communicated his withdrawal to his co-conspirators and took some positive action to withdraw from the conspiracy. Additionally, the defendant must have withdrawn from the conspiracy prior to its completion. Importantly, the defendant must have definitively cut ties with his fellow co-conspirators. If he continues to communicate with them or assist them in any way, this may prevent him from raising the defense of withdrawal.
The Washington Post reported last week, Sen. Mike Lee worked hard to overturn election, keep Trump in power, texts show:
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) worked furiously to overturn the 2020 election and keep President Donald Trump in power before ultimately abandoning the effort when no evidence of widespread fraud surfaced and his outreach to states for alternate electors proved futile, according to texts.
Mike Lee is a lawyer who likes to refer to himself as a “constitutional conservative,” yet he conspired to undermine the U.S. Constitution and overturn the 2020 election. He is up for election this year. He should be defeated and disbarred from the practice of law at a minimum.
Lee sent the texts to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who turned them over to the House committee investigating a pro-Trump mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. CNN reviewed the texts Lee and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) – Sen. Ted Cruz’s former chief of staff – sent Meadows and reported on them Friday. [All three are Tea Party Republicans.]
In texts to Meadows sent in November, Lee is highly supportive of Trump’s efforts to undo the election through legal challenges, offering on Nov. 7, 2020 — the day news organizations projected Joe Biden as the winner — his “unequivocal support for you to exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy at your disposal to restore Americans faith in our elections.”
“This doesn’t have to come down to a binary choice between (1) an immediate concession, and (2) a destruction of the credibility of the election process,” Lee wrote to Meadows that day.
Lee makes clear that he was working hard to assist Trump, saying in one text that he was spending “14 hours a day” on the effort and contacting state lawmakers seeking anything to give Congress a reason not to count the electoral votes for Biden on Jan. 6, 2021 and affirm his win.
“We need something from state legislatures to make this legitimate and to have any hope of winning. Even if they can’t convene, it might be enough if a majority of them are willing to sign a statement indicating how they would vote,” Lee wrote in one text. [This is a reference to the authoritarian “Independent State Legislature doctrine” (theory) which would allow a Republican-controlled state legislature to overturn the popular vote of its citizens in a free and fair election.]
* * *
Lee’s words on the Senate floor that day did not reflect what the texts showed: his frustration with Trump after the president criticized him at a Jan. 4 rally in Georgia for not doing enough to overturn the results, his complaints about fellow Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) and his recommendations to Meadows to seek the help of lawyers Sidney Powell and John Eastman [the author of the “Coup Memos.”]
“I’ve been spending 14 hours a day for the last week trying to unravel this for him. To have him take a shot at me like that in such a public setting without even asking me about it is pretty discouraging,” Lee wrote to Meadows.
Ahhh, poor baby. Did your “Dear Leader” hurt your fee-fees by not acknowledging all the work you were doing to undermine the Constitution and overurn the election to make him dictator?
Meadows apologized and said Trump would call.
In another text to Meadows, Lee expressed frustration with Cruz and Hawley, arguing that the two were supporting Trump’s efforts only to their benefit, and Trump’s detriment. Lee said that unless the effort produced a competing slate of electors under state law, it would only hurt Trump.
Hawley had announced in December 2020 that he would object to the electoral count; Cruz and 10 other senators announced Jan. 2 that they would object.
“I have grave concerns with the way my friend Ted is going about this effort,” Lee told Meadows. “This will not inure to the benefit of the president.”
“I only know that this will end badly for the President unless we have the Constitution on our side,” Lee added. “And unless these states submit new slates of Trump electors pursuant to state law, we do not.”
Lee mentioned none of these concerns or frustrations during his Jan. 6 floor speech.
Just to be clear, Sen. Lee was actively seeking to effectuate John Eastman’s “Coup Memos” by getting Republican-controlled state legislatures to overturn the popular vote of its citizens in a free and fair election, and to appoint a slate of fake GQP electors, under the bogus authoritarian “Independent State Legislature doctrine.” Question: What communications, if any, did Sen. Lee have with any of Arizona’s two groups of fake GQP electors?
Lee’s willingness to support Trump’s campaign to overturn the election is notable given his experience — he clerked for [the most radical Republican] Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and was mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee when Trump ran for office in 2016. [A sick joke.]
Lee is up for reelection this year and received Trump’s endorsement earlier this month. The former president praised Lee while mocking one of his challengers, independent conservative Evan McMullin, calling him “McMuffin.” Trump also took an indirect swipe at Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a favorite target. Romney twice voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges.
Months ahead of the election, Romney has not endorsed Lee.
One of Lee’s challengers for the Republican nomination, former Utah state Rep. Becky Edwards, said in a statement that the senator “enabled those seeking to keep themselves in power, no matter the consequences.”
“The moment Lee realized the gravity of Trump’s attempts to undermine the 2020 election, he should have stopped researching the legality of such actions and stopped pressuring local legislators,” Edwards said.
McMullin, who ran for the White House in 2016, questioned Lee’s decisions on Twitter.
“Why did Sen. Mike Lee advise spurious legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election?” McMullin asked. “And why did he hide those plans from both the public and the FBI in the days leading up to Jan. 6?”
Excellent point. Even if Sen. Lee can assert a withdrawal or abandonment defense, did he ever notify the FBI or DOJ of Trump’s coup plot ahead of events on January 6? If not, the abandonment defense should not apply.
Lee’s texts show that, soon after the election, it was Lee who encouraged Meadows to give [the Krazy Kraken Lady] Sidney Powell access to Trump, saying she would help him push forward the legal challenges. He provided Meadows with Powell’s contact information and initially seemed confident that Powell could help advance Trump’s case.
“Apparently she has a strategy to keep things alive and put several states back in play. Can you help get her in?” Lee texted.
Two days later, Lee once again vouched for Powell, calling her a “strong shooter.” [He is an incredibly poor judge of character and qualifications.]
As election results were being counted that November, Powell was making all sorts of false accusations of election fraud. She joined other members of Trump’s legal team [the so-called “elite strike force team” of bumbling lawyers] — including Rudolph Giuliani and Jenna Ellis — at a Republican National Committee news conference on Nov. 19, 2020, in which she falsely claimed that Trump “won by a landslide.”
“We are going to prove it,” Powell said.
In the time since, Powell has not only failed to bring forward substantial proof to back her claims of election fraud, she’s also facing multiple legal challenges, financial penalties and a possible disbarment.
Two hours after that news conference, Lee started to voice his doubts on Powell.
The senator, in a message to Meadows, said he was “worried about the Powell press conference.”
“The potential defamation liability for the president is significant here,” Lee said. “For the campaign and for the president personally. … Unless Powell can back up everything she said, which I kind of doubt she can.”
Meadows agreed, texting back: “Very concerned.”
By late November, Lee had backed away from Powell and instead began encouraging Meadows to hire right-wing lawyer John Eastman. But the trust in Eastman didn’t last long either given that, by mid-December, Lee began expressing doubts to Meadows about the plan to legally challenge the election’s certification Jan. 6.
“If you want senators to object, we need to hear from you on that ideally getting some guidance on what arguments to raise,” Lee texted Meadows on Dec. 16, 2020. “I think we’re now passed the point where we can expect anyone will do it without some direction and a strong evidentiary argument.”
By Jan. 3, Lee was arguing to Meadows that Trump’s effort to have states send alternate slates of electors to Congress would probably fail.
“I don’t think the president is grasping the distinction between what we can do and what he would like us to do,” he told Meadows that day, warning that the efforts “could all backfire badly.”
Hours after a mob stormed the Capitol, Lee voted to certify the election results and Biden’s win.
The New York Times adds, ‘Call Everyone Off’: Texts to Meadows Trace Republicans’ Alarm Before Jan. 6 (excerpt):
The text messages with Mr. Meadows show that Mr. Lee tried several times to offer advice and support for the effort to overturn the election, using multiple strategies.
Sen. Lee suggested that Mr. Trump should “disassociate himself” from Ms. Powell’s false claims after her performance at the November news conference, but even after that, the senator vouched for the conservative lawyer John Eastman, who wrote a [“Coup Memo”] outlining plans for overturning the election that members of both parties have likened to a blueprint for a coup.
Sen. Lee then endorsed a plan to have legislatures in “a very small handful of states” that Mr. Biden had won put forth pro-Trump electors [fake GQP electors], as part of a scheme proposed by Mr. Eastman to allow Vice President Mike Pence to reject Mr. Biden’s victory.
But Mr. Lee backed off the effort after no state legislature convened to certify so-called alternate electors, and he began criticizing plans by Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, both Republicans, to use Congress’s official count of electoral votes on Jan. 6 to challenge the election outcome.
“I have grave concerns with the way my friend Ted is going about this effort,” Mr. Lee wrote to Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Lee ultimately voted to confirm Mr. Biden’s victory. More than half of the Republicans in Congress — eight senators and 139 House members — voted to invalidate it, after a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters, enraged by the lie of a stolen election, stormed the Capitol demanding that it be overturned.
Rep. Chip Roy’s text messages with Mr. Meadows tell a similar tale of a lawmaker who appeared eager to fight alongside Mr. Trump but ultimately backed off when evidence of a stolen election did not appear.
“Dude, we need ammo,” Mr. Roy wrote to Mr. Meadows on Nov. 7, before the Texas lawmaker traveled to Georgia to try to assist in the effort to fight that state’s election results. “We need fraud examples. We need it this weekend.”
But Mr. Roy also warned against making inflammatory claims without evidence.
“We must urge the President to tone down the rhetoric, and approach the legal challenge firmly, intelligently and effectively without resorting to throwing wild desperate haymakers, or whipping his base into a conspiracy frenzy,” Mr. Roy wrote on Nov. 9.
The text messages show that Mr. Roy was also initially supportive of Mr. Eastman’s efforts but grew more skeptical as weeks went by and evidence of widespread fraud failed to materialize.
“The President should call everyone off,” Mr. Roy wrote to Mr. Meadows on Dec. 31. “It’s the only path.”
“If we substitute the will of states through electors with a vote by Congress every 4 years,” he added, “we have destroyed the electoral college.”
The next day, Mr. Roy followed up. If Mr. Trump “allows this to occur,” he wrote to Mr. Meadows, “we’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic.”
On Jan. 6, the day that rioters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Roy again reached out to Mr. Meadows.
“This is a sh*tshow,” he wrote. “Fix this now.”
Mr. Meadows replied: “We are.”
On Friday, Mr. Roy wrote on Twitter that he would make “no apologies for my private texts or public positions – to those on the left or right.” [Of course not. This guy is an even bigger asshole than his former boss, Ted Cruz.]
“I stand behind seeking truth, fighting nonsense, & then acting in defense of the Constitution,” he wrote.
What a fraud! He was part of the seditious conspiracy until the bumbling Trump lawyers failed to follow the advice that he and Sen. Lee gave them. It does not appear that he took any actions to report Trump’s coup plot to the FBI or DOJ ahead of the January 6 seditious insirrection. He is therefore complicit in the crime.
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Former Attorney General Eric Holder is calling for Sen. Mike Lee to be held accountable for his role in attempting to overthrow the 2020 election. In a tweet, https://twitter.com/EricHolder/status/1515912298858262528
Mike Lee has to be confronted about his actions to subvert our electoral process and then held accountable. Let him explain – if he can – his efforts. Media focus on this is not partisan – it’s their job.
Holder was responding to an op-ed by James Downie at the Washington Post, “Will the media let Sen. Mike Lee go unquestioned?”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/17/mike-lee-and-chip-roy-texts/
Earlier this month, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) became the fourth of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump last year to announce his retirement. On Sunday, Upton and NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd discussed the lawmaker’s career and why he is stepping down. Those reasons included the prospect of running in a newly drawn congressional district and the chance to spend more time with his family.
But another factor — and one for which media luminaries such as Todd are partly responsible — went unmentioned: the kid-gloves treatment of those Republicans who weren’t so principled, such as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).
[As] Trump and associates such as his attorney Rudy Giuliani beclowned themselves with conspiracy theories, Lee and Roy became more critical of the election subversion efforts. But both men still advocated for conservative lawyer John Eastman’s plan to have Republican-controlled state legislatures submit alternate slates of electoral college delegates and then have Vice President Mike Pence refuse to certify Joe Biden’s win.
In the days leading up to Jan. 6, however, Roy recognized the dangers of this plot. “The president should call everyone off,” he texted Meadows on Dec. 31.
Lee, however, continued searching for some justification for Eastman’s approach. “I’ve been calling state legislators for hours today,” he told Meadows on Jan. 4. “We need something from state legislatures to make this legitimate and to have any hope of winning.” When no state legislature was forthcoming, and Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, Lee did vote to certify the results.
[So] a Republican senator — a self-proclaimed “constitutional conservative,” no less — misled the country about his participation in a plot to overturn a presidential election. And yet not one of the five major Sunday talk shows mentioned one word about Lee — “Meet the Press,” ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’s “Face the Nation” and “Fox News Sunday” — couldn’t find time for one question, let alone one segment, about Lee.
[I]n a functioning democracy, it is the media’s job to call out those who scheme to subvert that democracy. This isn’t a partisan issue: Even a majority of Republicans agree that Pence did not have the power to overturn the election as he presided over the Senate. Roy can at least argue that he abandoned such efforts as the stakes became clear to him. Lee not only persisted, but also then tried to cover his tracks about what he did. Yet that perversion of public service is barely a blip on the political media’s radar.
Amanda Carpenter breaks down Sen. Mike Lee’s texts in a piece at The Bulwark. “Mike Lee’s Role in Trump’s Attempted Coup”, https://www.thebulwark.com/mike-lees-role-in-trumps-attempted-coup/
(Excerpts)
Specifically, these texts and Lee’s other on-the-record statements show he was consistent in advocating that the only way, according to the Constitution, to change the outcome was for state legislatures to appoint alternate slates of electors for Congress to accept on Jan. 6. Lee spent much time and effort insisting on this. But, the state legislatures did not. So Lee did not raise any objections on January 6th and voted to certify Joe Biden as president. And, for this Lee is supposed to be some kind of hero.
Because what if GOP-controlled state legislatures in the swing states Biden won had decided to appoint Trump electors based on whatever Cheetos-dust some drive-by gang of Cyber Ninjas sniffed and got high on while seizing Dominion Voting machines? Well, as Lee wrote Meadows on January 3: “Everything changes, of course, if the swing states submit competing slates of electors pursuant to state law.”
Got that? Everything changes. If state-level Republicans had been okay with overturning the election results, then Lee was okay with it, too.
[On] December 8, Lee texted Meadows: “If a very small handful of states were to have their legislatures appoint alternative slates of delegates, there could be a path.”
Lee was on board with Kraken lady, coup memo man, and an alternate elector plot. Check, check, check.
[N]otice the key line: “State legislatures in the battleground states . . . should . . . appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump.”
This is what the activist conservatives in Lee’s circle were loudly, openly demanding. They publicly endorsed a scheme to, through the power of state legislatures, convert Biden’s electors into Trump electors. All without any of the evidence of voter fraud Lee spent two months searching to find.
And we are now supposed to believe that Lee was shocked that his buddies who were willing to throw an election based on butt-dials from Rudy Giuliani would bypass the state legislatures to make up even phonier slates of electors?
That’s a story worth hearing. We deserve more explanation about all paths pursued to install alternate electors. Lee should, under oath, tell it to the Jan. 6th Committee.
[H]ow was it that as late as January 4 Lee was still “trying to figure out a path that I can persuasively defend”? Remember, by January 4, the election was decided. Trump had lost dozens of court cases. The states had certified the elections on December 14. It was over. And still, Lee was working his butt off trying to find any flimsy veneer of constitutionality for Trump’s bogus claims.
And what did Lee mean when he wrote “it might be enough if a majority of them are willing to sign a statement indicating how they would vote”? Did he mean that if Republican state legislators in, say, Pennsylvania and Arizona got together informally and put their name on a something—nothing binding, just a “statement,” maybe jotted on a bar napkin or the back of an envelope—Lee would consider that sufficient excuse for Congress to reject those states’ official, certified results? Keep in mind that a key suggestion in John Eastman’s short memo was to find a way to “give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so.”
In short: Lee outlined paths for Trump nuts to reverse the election. But, after giving these clowns all his attention, time, and effort, he didn’t, in the end, like how the Trump nuts tried to reverse the election. His disagreement was about tactics, not the mission. But his error was accepting the mission at all.
Mike Lee may want to pretend he had no role in this process, but the stone-cold truth is that he, and many other conservatives, breathed life into Trump’s schemes and made the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol possible.
Jennifer Rubin writes, “Mike Lee has some explaining to do”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/18/mike-lee-disqualify/
CNN released nearly 100 texts from Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the wake of the 2020 election. The two sets of texts, coming on the heels of the 2020 election, illuminate the difference between a partisan (but ultimately patriotic) Republican congressman and a GOP senator willing to overthrow the will of the voters — so long as he has a fig leaf of legal protection from state lawmakers.
Roy on Nov. 5 immediately demands evidence of fraud if the election is to be challenged. (“We have no tools / data / information to go out and fight RE: election / fraud. If you need / want it, we all need to know what’s going on.”) On Nov. 7, Roy again asks for evidence: “If you’re still in the game … dude, we need ammo. We need fraud examples. We need it this weekend.” By Nov. 9, Roy argues that they should exhaust every legal avenue but, absent proof of fraud, they must accept the results:
Roy, who represents much of the Hill Country west of Austin and San Antonio, continues to plead for actual evidence of fraud. By Dec. 31, he has heard enough: “The President should call everyone off. 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.”
Roy was pointing to the essence of the plot from attorney John Eastman — to get state legislatures without absence of fraud to send an alternate slate of delegates to Congress and thereby contravene the will of the voters. A coup, in other words. That Roy would not countenance.
Lee, a Utah senator, took a very different approach. Like Roy, he starts by pressing for information for election challenges. On Nov. 7, he sends Meadows a striking message to convey to the president: “We the undersigned offer our unequivocal support for you to exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy at your disposal to restore Americans faith in our elections.”
On Nov. 9, he signals that he is supportive of Sidney (“Kraken”) Powell and on Nov. 10 asks for the number of rejected ballots in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. By Nov. 19, Lee has watched Powell’s news conference and soured on her tactics. (“Unless Powell can immediately substantiate what she said today, the president should probably dissociate himself and refute any claims that can’t be substantiated.”)
On Nov. 22, in a pathetic show of subservience to Trump, Lee pleads with Meadows: “Please tell me what I should be saying.” By Nov. 23, Lee, too, has latched onto Eastman’s theory.
Understand that even at this stage, a month after the election, Republicans can point to no evidence of fraud. Which is where Eastman’s theory comes in: Lee pivots to pressuring state legislatures to send a slate that does NOT represent the will of the voters. On Dec. 8, he writes, “If a very small handful of states were to have their legislatures appoint alternative slates of delegates, there could be a path.”
On Jan. 3, Lee seems at a crossroads: “[A]ll of this could change if the states in question certified Trump electors pursuant to state law. But in the absence of that, this effort is destined not only to fail, but to hurt DJT in the process.” In short, so long as they get those alternate slates — backed up by nothing — they can aim to overturn the election. He repeats this theory: “We simply have no authority to reject a state’s certified electoral votes in the absence of a dueling slates, with the Trump slate coming from a state legislative determination.”
On Jan. 4, he seems to effectively confess to pressuring state legislatures to send an alternate slate no matter what the factual basis (again, no fraud has been found):
In short, “something” from the legislatures, in Lee’s mind, would make this “legitimate.” The will of the voters? That’s no longer under discussion. This is plainly an extra-constitutional grab. Lee ultimately gives up because the alternate slates — which he has been pushing for — don’t come through.
“Every good lawyer — and Mike Lee is a good one — knows that there are limits to the arguments that you are allowed to make and serious consequences if you go beyond those limits,” former House impeachment counsel Norm Eisen tells me. “This one was way over the line: because there was no fraud, there was no factual basis to claim that the state legislatures could step in and there was no legal basis. I think the new evidence shows a betrayal of his duty as an attorney and his oath as a senator.”
Lee’s Republican, Democratic and independent opponents in his Senate reelection bid all have decried his effort to overturn the election[.]
Former prosecutor Joyce White Vance sees something distinctly mendacious in Lee’s efforts:
“It’s chilling to see a US Senator propose a plan in writing to ignore the will of the voters & steal an election. That’s precisely what this is.”
Indeed, Lee lied to, among others, Robert Costa and Bob Woodward when he denied knowing about the Eastman scheme before Jan. 2. He had been working on the scheme himself since Nov. 23. Is this consciousness of guilt? A memory lapse? The Jan. 6 committee should put him under oath and ask.
Lee has already made known he does not think we are a democracy. [Yes, he actually said this.] The texts to Meadows raise a fundamental question for him: Do the people pick the president or can a state legislature under pressure from the losing president’s camp bypass the voters’ will with zero evidence of fraud?
Lee has some explaining to do, hopefully under oath. If he truly doesn’t understand that the expressed will of the people determines the outcome of presidential elections — only manipulated state legislatures — he should be compelled to leave office either by resignation or defeat at the ballot box. And if he doesn’t believe such poppycock, what was he doing for weeks in support of the Eastman/Trump plot long after the search for fraud had come up empty?