UTAH (ABC4) – Last week, a slew of text messages were released showing Utah Senator Mike Lee discussing efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
According to CNN, Lee exchanged texts messages with both Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s White House Chief of Staff and U.S. Representative Chip Roy from Texas. The texts had never been seen by the public before this report.
The report released over 100 text messages between the two Republican lawmakers and allies of Former President Donald Trump, spanning the period of Nov. 7, 2020 to the day of the January 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.
On Thursday, Sen. Lee sat down with ABC4 to address the text messages.
“These were text messages between me and my friend Mark Meadows who was the White House Chief of Staff at the point,” Senator Lee said.
Senator Lee said he was looking into whether there was any truth to whether some states were planning to rescind or modify their electoral votes in the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021.
The Republican senator said there weren’t any states planning to modify their electoral votes. He followed up with Meadows again about the rumors circulating about states planning to modify electoral votes.
“I reminded him of the fact that there’s really no role for Congress to play. The electoral college and the presidential elections are up to the states, not the federal government,” Senator Lee said.
He said the text messages were consistent with what he said in his speech on the Senate floor on January 6, explaining that he voted to certify the electoral votes.
According to the texts obtained by CNN, both legislators supported legal challenges to the election results, but later show the two withdrawing from the idea.
In a text exchange with Meadows on November 7, Lee expressed his “unequivocal support for (Meadows) to exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy at your disposal to restore Americans faith in our elections.”
