‘Call Everyone Off’: Texts to Meadows Trace Republicans’ Alarm Before Jan. 6

WASHINGTON — For weeks in late 2020, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, cheered on President Donald J. Trump’s effort to battle his election defeat, privately providing up “a gaggle of prepared and constant advocates who will go to bat for him.”

In textual content messages to Mark Meadows, then the White Home chief of employees, Mr. Lee inspired the Trump marketing campaign to embrace Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump lawyer whom the senator described as a “straight shooter,” and mentioned the president ought to “rent the proper authorized crew and set them unfastened instantly.”

However when Ms. Powell put forth wild claims of overseas rigging of election machines at a broadly derided information convention in November, Mr. Lee was chagrined and quietly started to query what Mr. Trump was as much as.

“I’m fearful concerning the Powell press convention,” Mr. Lee wrote in one other textual content message to Mr. Meadows. “The potential defamation legal responsibility for the president is important right here.”

That message and a number of other others from Mr. Lee, in addition to a separate set of exchanges between Consultant Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, and Mr. Meadows, hint an about-face by the 2 Republican lawmakers. The pair began out as enthusiastic supporters of Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election however regularly grew alarmed about his push to invalidate the outcomes and finally opposed his bid to get Congress to overturn them on Jan. 6, 2021.

The textual content messages, that are within the possession of the Home committee investigating the Capitol riot, had been obtained by CNN and authenticated by The New York Instances.

They supply a window into the eagerness of Republicans — even some who ended up voting on Jan. 6 to verify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory — to consider Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud and their willingness to go to nice lengths, together with makes an attempt at exploiting the nation’s election legal guidelines, to maintain him in energy. Additionally they illustrate how quickly these efforts spiraled uncontrolled, they usually present a eager consciousness on the a part of at the least some Republicans concerned that the endeavor had develop into untenable to the purpose of being harmful.

The textual content messages had been despatched to and from Mr. Meadows, who turned them over to the Home committee whereas he was cooperating with the panel. Mr. Meadows later refused to take a seat for an interview with the committee, and the Home voted to suggest that the Justice Division prosecute him for felony contempt of Congress.

A lawyer for Mr. Meadows didn’t reply to a request for remark. A spokesman for the committee declined to remark.

The textual content messages with Mr. Meadows present that Mr. Lee tried a number of occasions to supply recommendation and assist for the trouble to overturn the election, utilizing a number of methods.

Mr. Lee urged that Mr. Trump ought to “disassociate himself” from Ms. Powell’s false claims after her efficiency on the November information convention, however even after that, the senator vouched for the conservative lawyer John Eastman, who wrote a memo outlining plans for overturning the election that members of each events have likened to a blueprint for a coup.

Mr. Lee then endorsed a plan to have legislatures in “a really small handful of states” that Mr. Biden had gained put forth pro-Trump electors, as a part of a scheme proposed by Mr. Eastman to permit Vice President Mike Pence to reject Mr. Biden’s victory.

However Mr. Lee backed off the trouble after no state legislature convened to certify so-called alternate electors, and he started criticizing plans by Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, each Republicans, to make use of Congress’s official depend of electoral votes on Jan. 6 to problem the election end result.

“I’ve grave issues with the best way my pal Ted goes about this effort,” Mr. Lee wrote to Mr. Meadows.

Mr. Lee finally voted to verify Mr. Biden’s victory. Greater than half of the Republicans in Congress — eight senators and 139 Home 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 or not it’s overturned.

A spokesman for Mr. Lee confirmed the authenticity of the textual content messages and mentioned they instructed “the identical story Senator Lee instructed from the ground of the Senate the day he voted to certify the election outcomes of each state within the nation.”

“They inform the story of a U.S. senator fulfilling his responsibility to Utah and the American individuals by following the Structure,” the spokesman, Lee Lonsberry, mentioned, citing the senator’s remarks after the lethal riot, which injured greater than 150 law enforcement officials.

Mr. Roy’s textual content messages with Mr. Meadows inform an identical story of a lawmaker who appeared wanting to battle alongside Mr. Trump however finally backed off when proof of a stolen election didn’t seem.

“Dude, we want ammo,” Mr. Roy wrote to Mr. Meadows on Nov. 7, earlier than the Texas lawmaker traveled to Georgia to attempt to help within the effort to battle that state’s election outcomes. “We’d like fraud examples. We’d like it this weekend.”

However Mr. Roy additionally warned in opposition to making inflammatory claims with out proof.

“We should urge the President to tone down the rhetoric, and method the authorized problem firmly, intelligently and successfully with out resorting to throwing wild determined haymakers, or whipping his base right into a conspiracy frenzy,” Mr. Roy wrote on Nov. 9.

The textual content messages present that Mr. Roy was additionally initially supportive of Mr. Eastman’s efforts however grew extra skeptical as weeks glided by and proof of widespread fraud didn’t materialize.

“The President ought to name everybody off,” Mr. Roy wrote to Mr. Meadows on Dec. 31. “It’s the one path.”

“If we substitute the need of states via electors with a vote by Congress each 4 years,” he added, “we have now destroyed the electoral school.”

The following day, Mr. Roy adopted up. If Mr. Trump “permits this to happen,” he wrote to Mr. Meadows, “we’re driving a stake within the coronary heart of the federal republic.”

On Jan. 6, the day that rioters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Roy once more reached out to Mr. Meadows.

“It is a sh*tshow,” he wrote. “Repair this now.”

Mr. Meadows replied: “We’re.”

On Friday, Mr. Roy wrote on Twitter that he would make “no apologies for my non-public texts or public positions – to these on the left or proper.”

“I stand behind looking for fact, preventing nonsense, & then performing in protection of the Structure,” he wrote.