Evan Vucci/AP
- Mark Meadows admitted there was little evidence of 2020 election fraud, The Washington Post reported.
- In a text, the former White House chief of staff said his own son was not finding much proof.
- The revelation comes amid speculation Meadows is now cooperating with federal prosecutors.
Former President Donald Trump's last chief of staff was a loyal soldier while in office and a key player in the effort to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election. But despite his diligent efforts to pressure election officials to find evidence of "fraud," Mark Meadows privately acknowledged there was little to support his boss's sweeping claims, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
In a text message, described by the Post as having been recently "scrutinized by federal prosecutors," Meadows told an unnamed White House lawyer that his own son was unable to find much to support what the Trump administration was saying in public.
Specifically, Meadows wrote that his son, a lawyer in the Atlanta area, had only found a handful of votes that could have potentially been cast on behalf of deceased individuals, according to the Post, far below the 5,000 that Trump claimed — and nowhere near the roughly 12,000 votes that he asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" for him in an infamous December 2020 phone call.
The Post did not reproduce Meadows' text, writing that it was described to the publication by "people familiar" with the investigation into the January 6 insurrection. According to the newspaper, Meadows' text prompted a joking response from the White House attorney, who asked if his son could help find all the other voters Trump would need to have won the 2020 election.
In December 2021, Georgia election officials said just four dead voters were found across the state.
Meadows did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
The former chief of staff has kept a low profile in recent months, last posting to his Twitter account in February, amid speculation that he has been cooperating with Special Counsel Jack Smith, who recently told the former president that he is a target of the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 vote.
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