Washington (CNN) — Two days after the 2020 presidential election, while the votes were still being counted, the eldest son of Donald Trump he texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows saying “we have operational control” to ensure his father gets a second term, with Republican majorities in the US Senate and US legislatures. swing states, CNN has learned.
In the previously unreported text, Donald Trump Jr. lays out ideas to keep his father in power by undermining the Electoral College process, according to the message reviewed by CNN. The text is among the records obtained by the House select committee investigating on January 6, 2021.
“It’s very simple,” Trump Jr. texted Meadows on Nov. 5, adding later in the same letter: “We have multiple paths, we control them all.”
In a statement to CNN, Trump Jr.’s attorney, Alan S. Futerfas, said: “After the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others. Given the date, this message likely originated from someone else and was forwarded”.
The November 5 text message outlines a strategy that is almost identical to the one that the former president’s allies tried to carry out in the following months. Trump Jr. specifically references filing lawsuits and promoting recounts to prevent certain swing states from certifying their results, as well as preventing a handful of Republican state chambers from submitting lists of bogus “Trump electors.”
If all else fails, under Trump Jr.’s text, Republican lawmakers in Congress could simply vote to reinstate Trump as president on Jan. 6.
“We have full leverage operating control,” the message reads. “Moral High Ground POTUS must begin second term now.”
Trump Jr.’s text is revealing on several levels. It shows how those closest to the former president were already exchanging ideas on how to annul the elections months before the January 6 insurrection, and before all the votes were counted. It would be another two days before the mainstream media declared Joe Biden the winner on November 7.
The text also adds to a growing body of evidence of how Trump’s inner circle was actively involved in discussing how to challenge the election results.
On March 28, Judge David Carter, a federal judge in California, said that Trump, along with conservative attorney John Eastman, launched an “unprecedented” campaign to nullify a Democratic election, calling it “a coup in search of a legal theory.
Meadows attorney George Terwilliger declined to comment for this story. A House select committee spokesman declined to comment.