Mike Lee Breaks Silence on Leaked Texts to Meadows, Insists He Wasn’t a Trump Stooge: I Wasn’t ‘There to Do His Bidding’

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is speaking out for the first time about the leaked texts he sent to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in which he appeared to ask for marching orders from former President Donald Trump’s team.

“Please tell me what I should be saying,” Lee texted Meadows on November 20.

In a 45-minute phone interview with the Deseret News published late Wednesday, Lee denied being a stooge for the former president who was willing to blindly follow orders.

“He knows that when I said things like ‘Tell me what we ought to be saying,’ what I was just trying to figure out was ‘What is your message?’” Lee said. “He knows me well enough to know that that doesn’t mean I will do your bidding, whatever it is.”

Lee went on to complain that his texts, obtained by the January 6th Committee, were leaked and taken out of context to politically damage him in the middle of his reelection campaign. As for whether the 2020 election was “free and fair,” Lee acknowledged Joe Biden as the president, but he hedged by speaking of fraud and manipulation on a big enough scale that it could have conceivably flipped the election.

From the report:

“President Biden is the president of the United States. … We know that he is the president of the United States because the Electoral College met on Dec. 14 and then cast electoral votes. Those electoral votes signaled the victory for President Biden.”

Lee went on to say there will always be attempts to manipulate the results of any election and that there is a risk of fraud. He said he can’t say what did or didn’t happen in any given state. He said it’s not Congress’ job to figure out if the election in any or every state was fair and free of fraud.

Asked if there was fraud in the 2020 election, Lee said, “I’ve answered your question.”

Lee also addressed conservative attorney John Eastman’s scheme to have Vice President Mike Pence overturn the election results on Trump’s behalf. The report says that after reviewing Eastman’s memo, the senator didn’t see “any real analysis about the basis on which a state would change its slate of electors or why that would be legitimate.”

“That’s when I became alarmed. Honestly, by Jan. 2, I started to think this had blown over and maybe they were not going to try this stunt that I think could be dangerous,” he said.

Still, Lee texted Meadows four times about the theory in Eastman’s letter after receiving it. “Everything changes, of course, if the swing states submit competing slates of 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,” read one text.

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