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chief of staff mark meadows. the texts are important because they appear to provide more evidence that trump s inner circle knew biden won the election. the texts in question show meadows joking about trump s election claims. referring to his son a lawyer having trouble proving trump s claims. in early december, meadows texted quote, my son found 12 obituaries and six other possibles depending on the voter roll accuracy. hirschmann said that sound more like it. maybe rudy can help him find the other 10 k. responding lol. such mockery of trump s claims was common place. quote, trump aides and other republican officials expressed deep skepticism or even openly mocked the election claims being publicly made by trump.
undermine trump s ability to rely on the so-called costanza defense, made famous by seinfeld, quote, it isn t a lie if you believe it. the texts are more evidence that trump insiders didn t believe the election lies. they build on what multiple witnesses have told the january 6th committee. trump didn t believe those lies either. he said words to the effect of, yeah, we lost, we need to let that issue go to the next guy. being president biden. and he was looking at the tv and he said, can you believe i lost to this effing guy. does the president really think that he lost, and he said, a lot of times he ll tell me that he lost, but he wants to keep fighting it. joining me now to break it all down is neal katyal, former acting solicitor general for the obama administration, and timothy, former chief investigator for the january 6th committee. tim, first to you, your committee first uncovered these texts from mark meadows, how do
the texts were sent about a month before trump s infamous january 2nd phone call with georgia secretary of state, brad raffensperger, here s what meadows said on that call. for example, mr. secretary, i can tell you, you said there was only two dead people that would vote. i can promise you there are more than that. and that may be what your investigation shows, but i can promise you there are more than that. remember, meadows also testified before a grand jury last month for jack smith. now, all of this is making trump world very nervous. trump and his allies have been, quote, feverishly speculating about the degree of meadows cooperation with the smith probe. meadows has gone silent, and there are some big questions as to who special counsel jack smith really has. he may have some accolades of president trump who are in the only position that they can take, and that is the truth. the next texts could further
counsel jack smith, his family, and other investigators. trump s behavior is reportedly the main driver behind the doj s efforts here. he has singled out many prosecutors be i name, and he recently warned ominously that it would be, quote, dangerous if he were to go to jail. i think it s a very dangerous thing to even talk about. okay. because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters, and i mean, maybe, you know, maybe a hundred, 150, i ve never seen anything like it, much more passionate than they had in 2020, and much more passionate than they had in 2016. i think it would be very dangerous. over the weekend, trump raged against the prosecutors in a series of social media posts. he wrote, quote, we must stop these monsters. and he reshared this post made by a user, which reads, quote, nothing can stop what is coming,