Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was messaging a conspiracy theorist who pushed for access to voting machine data and forwarded a ppt on how to get the president to declare a national emergency alleging electoral fraud, according to newly discovered texts.
When Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel, gave updates on the far-fetched elements of the election overturn campaign, Meadows occasionally simply replied, “OK.” When Waldron informed Meadows of the Arizona judge’s decision to reject a lawsuit requesting access to voting equipment in a state supported by Joe Biden, Meadows responded with the word “Pathetic.”
The messages, which CNN obtained, are just the most recent example of senior advisers to President Donald Trump soliciting information from a group of loyalists in an effort to support the president’s allegations of voter fraud.
The texts show Meadows, a former leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, monitoring those initiatives during the final weeks of the Trump administration, when Trump and his allies were looking for ways to stay in power and repeatedly claiming fraud even as various courts rejected their claims.
Waldron, a friend of the ousted and pardoned former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, is a retired Army colonel who owns a bar and became involved with Trump all of a sudden.
His views attracted individuals including the Chinese Communist Party, financier George Soros, and Dominion Voting Systems, which has filed defamation lawsuits against a number of individuals and media sites.
A powerpoint presentation titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN” that Waldron claims to have distributed was the subject of a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee last year.
It cited unsubstantiated assertions that China and Venezuela were manipulating the voting machines to manipulate the results and urged President Trump to declare a national emergency to postpone the certification of the election results.
In the Dec. 23, 2020 discussion, Waldron voiced worry that ‘delay tactics’ would prevent him and his friends from having access to voting equipment as a result of the Arizona judge’s decision. “Our lead domino we were banking on to start the cascade,” he said of Arizona.
Additionally, on December 28, he texted Meadows about an analysis of voting irregularities in “many counties,” which he said were a “Southern grab.” Meadows replied, “OK,” suggesting that he understood the message.
Meadows provided a wealth of email data at the beginning of the probe on January 6, but he and Waldron have been attempting to obstruct the panel’s access to their cell data.
Waldron was in communication with other state officials who raised fraud concerns and helped get a contentious private audit, which ultimately confirmed Biden’s victory in the state, according to other texts and emails.
In an email sent to state lawmakers on December 11, a member of his team requested permission to “carry a hard drive” to the county elections office in order to acquire voter information and “deliver the files to us.”
John Eastman, an attorney who has emerged as a key player for the House Jan. 6 panel, and I testified together at a hearing in December 2020. Waldron also gave testimony at several of the open hearings held in GOP-controlled states after the November elections.
Eastman participated in a heated Oval Office debate on whether then-Vice President Mike Pence had the right to reject votes from states that have validated their ballots while speaking at the “Stop the Steal” event close to the White House.
He collaborated closely with Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani to acquire access to vote machines. According to a source who spoke with the network, “Waldron was responsible for planning and monitoring execution” of operations to infiltrate voting systems.
When the panel subpoenaed Waldron last year, the chairman of the House Jan. 6 Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss. ), stated that Waldron “reportedly played a role in propagating charges of election fraud and disseminating prospective techniques for disputing results of the 2020 election.”
In the weeks preceding the attack on January 6th, he was allegedly reportedly in contact with individuals in the Trump White House and in Congress to discuss his views.
The powerpoint presentation, according to him, is a “alarming plan for reversing a national election.”
It referenced his public remarks that he briefed lawmakers on election fraud possibilities and visited the White House eight to ten times.