The date was shortly after last November’s presidential election. Mr. Meadows, then President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, was replying to a member of Congress who had asked whether the White House was urging GOP state lawmakers to send alternate pro-Trump electors to Washington.
“The White House was not simply a bystander in the activities at the Capitol building. They were central in coordinating and fomenting it,” says Cornell Clayton, a professor of government at Washington State University and director of the Thomas Foley Institute of Public Policy.
In Arizona, Republican legislators passed a law that takes authority over election lawsuits away from the secretary of state, who’s currently a Democrat, and hands it to the governor, who’s a Republican. In Georgia, Republican lawmakers have weakened the powers of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused Mr. Trump’s entreaties to change his state’s results. A candidate endorsed by the former president is running to replace Mr. Raffensperger in 2022.