In the days immediately after the 2020 election, Donald Trump Jr openly discussed with a top White House official a detailed plan to “control” who was declared the final winner of the presidential contest, according to text messages uncovered by the congressional 6 January investigation.
“We have operational control,” Mr Trump told then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows two days after the election, as final vote tallies were still being certified by individual states.
“We have multiple paths. We control them all (sic)," he added, according to CNN, which first reported the messages.
In the texts, to which it is unclear Mr Meadows ever responded, the former president’s son describes a strategy where Republican-controlled state legislatures and US senators could push the final Electoral College tally to a Trump win, regardless of what voters chose.
“This is what we need to do, please read it and please get it to everyone that needs to see it because I’m not sure we’re doing it,” Donald Trump Jr added elsewhere in the texts.
His lawyer claimed the text messages may have been written by someone else.
"After the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others. Given the date, this message likely originated from someone else and was forwarded,” attorney Alan S Futerfas told CNN.
Mr Meadows’s lawyer has declined media attempts to seek comment on the story.
The Independent has reached out to former president Donald Trump for comment.
The texts are the latest shocking revelation from the committee’s investigation into the 6 January insurrection in Washington, where a mob of Trump supporters ransacked the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win by Congress.
In another bundle of messages, Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of current US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, urged Mr Meadows to stop the “heist” of the election by the “Biden crime family,” and included claims that repeated right-wing conspiracy theories about the election.
Though Donald Trump and his supporters frequently claim the election was “rigged” by Democrats, they have now been linked directly to multiple attempts to sway the electoral process.
In January, a judge in Georgia authorised a special grand jury in the criminal investigation of the former president’s election-time conduct in the state, which included a call where Mr Trump was recorded pressuring Georgia election officials to help him “find” enough votes to win the state.
The Trump campaign and its allies filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the election results and pushed for recounts in a variety of states, none of which yielded evidence that Mr Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 election.
