A startling text from Donald Trump Jr. about taking “operational control” of the 2020 presidential election even before the race was called “could be a smoking gun” amid the ongoing insurrection criminal probes, a former federal prosecutor warned Sunday.
Trump Jr. explained in the text sent just two days after the 2020 election to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows how to wrest control of the race from American voters.
“It’s very simple,” he messaged. “We have multiple paths. We control them all ... We have operational control Total leverage .... Moral High Ground POTUS must start 2nd term now.”
Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama, referred to the text on MSNBC’s “Sunday Show” as a “smoking gun.” She also described the message as a “powerful piece of evidence” that Donald Trump and his supporters planned all along to keep him in the White House, regardless of how Americans voted.
“This is two days after the election, the election result hasn’t been called yet,” she emphasized. “But Donald Trump Jr. is already acting on the assumption his father is going to lose the election” — too soon to know for certain, and far too early to have gathered any possible evidence of the rigged election Trump and backers would quickly claim.
“This becomes a powerful piece of evidence that they were aware that they had lost, that they were aware it wasn’t fraud, and they were going to have to come up with these alternate schemes — including fake slates of electors to get across the finish line,” Vance added.
Trump Jr.’s lawyer Alan S. Futerfas told CNN last week that his client was likely forwarding a message from someone else in his text — though he did not reveal the possible source.
Several points in Trump Jr.’s text echoed the so-called “coup memos” authored by far-right attorney John Eastman, a key architect of a plan for Trump in the White House.
Last month, U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote in a decision that he believed the former president and Eastman had launched a “campaign to overturn a democratic election — an action unprecedented in American history.” He said it was “more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021” to seize control of the White House for a second term.