WaPo’s Leonnig: Mark Meadows Immunity Deal Means the ‘Jig Is Up’

Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that the “jig is up” on 2020 election doubts while discussing ABC News reporting that former President Donald Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was granted immunity to testify under oath to special counsel Jack Smith’s team.

Meadows reportedly testified that he told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that all allegations of significant voting fraud were false.

Leonnig said, “We have known that Mark Meadows gave his full account to Jack Smith and had significant concerns about this claim about the election being stolen. We have seen texts and exchanges that Mark Meadows had with people in the White House counsel’s office and other lawyers in which he made fun of the claim that there was an election that had been stolen. There was fraud enough in states such as Georgia to call those counts into question. As I remember one of those text exchanges he said even my son hasn’t found enough dead people that voted in Georgia to raise questions about this. So it’s pretty powerful stuff.”

He continued, “We have known for awhile that Mark Meadows had his doubts about this claim. I want to underscore one other element that this reveals. If Meadows is admitting that he made up the whole sections in his book about the election lie, that there wasn’t fraud, if he’s acknowledging that those were false, it reveals to most of us reporters who have been covering this for a long time that the jig is up for a host of other Republican leaders who have been trading on this story, to stay connected to voters, that they think are riled up about this. To stay connected to a group of people that they are misleading in order to get their votes. People who gobble up conspiracy theories, distrust the government, and can be loosely misled and led astray.”

Leonnig added, “I wouldn’t say it’s a crack in the dam, but it will be really interesting to watch what happens for other Republican leaders who have insisted that the election was stolen like Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan, a host of people, many of whom are closely tied to Mark Meadows and Donald Trump.”

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