Mariam Zuhaib/AP
- Mike Lee privately trashed his friend Ted Cruz’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
- “I have grave concerns with the way my friend Ted is going about this effort,” Lee wrote to Meadows.
- Friends, Lee and Cruz would later split over whether to object to the certification of Arizona and Pennsylvania’s results.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee privately expressed “grave concerns” to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about his friend and political ally Sen. Ted Cruz’s efforts to question and potentially overturn some of the 2020 election results.
“I have grave concerns with the way my friend Ted is going about this effort,” Lee wrote to Meadows on January 3, according to CNN. “This will not inure to the benefit of the president.”
Lee’s texts are among the thousands of messages Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.
His objections were more to some of the avenues that Cruz and Sen. Josh Hawley were taking than Republicans actually trying to find avenues to thwart Joe Biden from becoming the president.
“Everything changes, of course, if the swing states submit competing slates of electors pursuant to state law,” Lee added in a message to Meadows on the same day.
Lee was referencing a movement led by Cruz to get state legislatures under Republican control to send alternative slates of electors or to suggest that they might do so. Trump went so far as to meet with the top two Republican leaders of Michigan’s legislature. At the time, Cruz and Republican Sens. Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, and Mike Braun suggested allowing a national commission to study fraud allegations and report their findings. State legislatures could then respond by proposing new slates of electors that could differ from their certified results.
Unlike Cruz or Sen. Josh Hawley, Lee did not end up voting to object to the certification of either Arizona or Pennsylvania’s results. The Pennsylvania vote came in the early hours of January 7, after lawmakers reconvened following the violent Capitol riot.
Lee is particularly close to Cruz.
He was the first senator to endorse Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign. The Utah Republican also participated in a loud and chaotic objection to the quick process of declaring Trump the Republican presidential nominee on the floor of the 2016 Republican National Convention. Many of those objectors were staunch Cruz supporters. Cruz also floated Lee’s name as a possible Supreme Court pick when President Donald Trump needed to fill Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat.
Hawley’s actions before the January 6 insurrection were arguably even more consequential than Cruz’s. The Missouri Republican was the first senator to pledge to join House members in objecting to the certification of a state’s results, a key moment since House lawmakers need at least one senator to join them in order for both chambers to be able to vote on overturning the results.
Cruz and Hawley have repeatedly defended their actions. Cruz has tried to argue that his vote was not an effort to stop President Joe Biden from being formally declared the winner. One alternative they floated could have done exactly that though by potentially proposing alternate slates of electors that would have differed from a state’s certified results.
Lee also questioned this effort in his texts to Meadows. This, Lee wrote, “could help people like Ted and Josh to the detriment of DJT.” (DJT is Trump’s initials.)
Spokespeople for Lee, Cruz, and Hawley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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