Mike Lee has some
explaining to do
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:
1. 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. 2. Goal 1a is to get the president re-elected by counting every “legal” vote through recounts in states where the margins qualify, and filing lawsuits in states where there is enough circumstantial voting irregularities evidence to justify the legal action. 3. Goal 1b is to expose corruption where found in a way that motivates public officials to bring about effective change to the voting process which brings meaningful and effective election reform allowing for every vote to be counted in an open/transparent and fair manner to all parties the end game for future elections is for a clear winner to be declared and accepted by all parties. 4. Once the final determination has been made, if we lose, we have an orderly transfer of power, and push hard for election process reform so that this does not happen again if we win, full speed ahead on all conservative fronts. 5. This process must not jeopardize the Senate runoffs in GA by turning moderate republicans and independents against our party we must turn out our people for these runoff elections.
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):
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. … I’ve been calling state legislators for hours today, and am going to spend hours doing the same tomorrow. I’m trying to figure out a path that I can persuasively defend, and this won’t make it any easier, especially if others now think I’m doing this because he went after me. This just makes it a lot more complicated. And it was complicated already. 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.
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:
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. 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?