Monday 26 September 2022 11:14 PM Text messages show Meadows had direct contact with operative who was trying to ... trends now

Newly uncovered texts reveal former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows exchanging messages with a conspiracy theorist who pushed to gain access to voting machine data and forwarded a powerpoint about having the president declare a national emergency claiming election fraud.

Meadows sometimes responded simply 'OK' when Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel, would provide updates on far-fetched aspects of the election overturn effort. But Meadows wrote 'Pathetic' when Waldron updated him on an Arizona judge's decision to rule against a lawsuit demanding access to voting machines in a state carried by Joe Biden.

The texts, obtained by "CNN, are just the latest evidence of top advisors to President Donald Trump pulling in information from a collection of allies scrounging for scraps of information that might back up the president's claims of voter fraud.

The texts reveal Meadows, a former head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, keeping tabs on those efforts during the last weeks of the Trump administration, while Trump and his allies were searching for ways to stay in power and repeatedly claiming fraud even as a series of courts rejected their claims.

Waldron, an associate of fired and pardoned former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, is a retired Army colonel who owns a bar and became connected with Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell after the election.

His theories pulled in such figures as the Chinese Communist Party, financier George Soros, and Dominion Voting Systems – which has sued a host of figures and media outlets claiming defamation. 

The House January 6 Committee last year subpoenaed Waldron over a power-point presentation he says he circulated titled 'Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN.'