On Monday, Talking Points Memo (TPM), a Democratic Party-friendly political news site, began publishing some of the 2,319 text messages former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows turned over to the January 6 House Select Committee in December 2021.

The newly published text messages obtained by TPM demonstrate that Meadows, and by extension Trump, schemed with at least 34 Republicans in Congress to overturn the presidential election. These activities began prior to Joe Biden being declared the winner on November 7, 2020 and continued after the attack on Congress on January 6, 2021.

For refusing to cooperate with the Select Committee after initially turning over the messages last year, Meadows was found in contempt of Congress. For reasons still not explained, Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to pursue contempt charges against Trump’s top coup accomplice. Meadows, like every other high-level Republican co-conspirator, has yet to be arrested or charged for his role in the attempted coup over 23 months after the fact.

The texts show that Republican lawmakers prior to and after the election sent dozens of conspiracy theories to Meadows concerning non-existent voter fraud, which Trump amplified and continues to repeat to this day. The messages also show that even after the attack on the Congress, Republican lawmakers were lobbying Trump to deploy the military and invoke martial law to stop the inauguration of Biden.

“Mark,” South Carolina Representative Ralph Norman wrote to Meadows on January 17, 2021, “in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of � no return � in saving our Republic!! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall (sic) Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!”

Earlier this year, CNN, which has had access to all of the text messages since April 2022 but failed to publish them, confirmed that fascist Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene sent a similar message to Meadows that same day.

“In our private chat with only [Republican] Members [of Congress],” Greene wrote to Meadows on January 17, 2021, “several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall (sic) law.”

The messages show that while not every Republican lawmaker was calling on Trump to deploy the military and seize power, several continued to offer the aspiring dictator words of encouragement after the attack on Congress, which the Republican National Committee earlier this year called “legitimate political discourse.”

On January 9, 2021, Georgia Representative Andrew Clyde wrote to Meadows: “I would like to pass to POTUS [president of the United States] that we are still with him, I believe in him and I want to encourage him. I will do my best to continue to fight for election integrity too.”

Confirming that support for Trump was not relegated to a few fascists in the party, Clyde wrote, “Jody Hice [another Republican Georgia representative] suggested this was a good way to reach President Trump with encouragement.”

“I will share it with him,” Meadows replied gratefully. “Thanks Andrew.”

Even prior to all of the votes being counted in November 2020, Republican politicians were sending messages to Meadows encouraging Trump to refuse to accept the election results.

After Fox News declared Arizona for Biden, leading “Stop the Steal” organizer Representative Andy Biggs (Arizona) texted Meadows late on November 3, 2020, “[P]lease make sure no one in the campaign or press office says anything about conceding in Arizona because I am very confident that as this thing goes President Trump is going to win.” According to TPM, Biggs “was one of Meadows’ most frequent congressional correspondents, with the pair exchanging 63 messages.”

On November 6, 2021, well after the Associated Press, NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox News had called Arizona for Biden, and one day before he would be declared the winner nationally, Biggs texted Meadows that victory in Arizona was still “doable,” and proceeded to outline what would become the fraudulent elector scheme, which is still under investigation by the Department of Justice.

“I’m sure you have heard of this proposal,” Biggs texted Meadows on November 6. “It is to encourage the state legislatures to appoint [electors] in the various states where there’s been shenanigans. If I understand right most of those states have Republican Legislatures’s (sic)... Is anybody on the team researching and considering lobbying for that?”

Meadows responded, “I love it,” less than 10 minutes later.

Republican senators joined their House colleagues in lending support to Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. TPM confirmed that Senators Kevin Cramer (North Dakota), Mike Lee (Utah), Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), David Perdue (Georgia), Ted Cruz (Texas) and Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming) texted with Meadows about objecting to the election results despite having no evidence.

One message sent from Cruz to Meadows on January 2, 2021 vowed to “vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed.”

Meadows responded, “Perfect.”

The day before the attack on Congress, on January 5, 2021, top Trump attack dog, Representative Jim Jordan (Ohio), sent Meadows a message advocating that Vice President Mike Pence “call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all” and unilaterally declare Trump the winner.

“I have pushed for this,” Meadows replied to Jordan. “Not sure it is going to happen.”

Most of these criminals who collaborated in the very nearly successful plot to overthrow the government and establish a presidential dictatorship under Trump remain in office, where they continue to conspire for the establishment of a fascistic, authoritarian government. The Republicans will control the House of Representatives in the incoming 118th Congress in January. Jordan will become the chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

The House Select Committee, which has had all of these texts in its possession for over a year, has so far refused to publish them. Instead, with the Republicans set to disband the committee in less than a month, it has drip-fed certain messages to corporate media outlets, while spending the last year-and-a-half advancing a false narrative that the January 6 coup was singularly led and directed by Trump and a small number of Republican “crazies,” over the objections of a large majority of the party.

Previously published messages showing Meadows talking with not only Republican lawmakers, but also with Fox News media personalities such as Sean Hannity, have already exploded this lie. Trump’s coup was supported by not only a majority of the Republican Party in Congress and at the state and local level, but also by substantial sections of the police, military and intelligence apparatus, sections of the corporate media and a faction on the Supreme Court.

No doubt there are hundreds if not thousands of messages yet to be published, if they have not already been deleted, that show exchanges between Meadows, Republican politicians, Trump and elements within the capitalist state concerning actions to be taken in the assault on the US Capitol and during the ensuing period.

This massive coverup is aimed at keeping the public in the dark and helping Biden and the Democrats prop up the Republican Party in the interests of prosecuting Washington’s war against Russia in Ukraine and preparing for war against China. For American capitalism, facing an unprecedented political, social, economic and geo-political crisis, and a rapidly growing upsurge of the working class, maintaining the two-party system through which it has ruled for nearly two centuries is a critical question.

That is why Biden declared his support for a “strong Republican Party” in the aftermath of the attempted coup, and has continued, along with the entire Democratic Party, to appeal for “bipartisan unity” with the Democrats’ “Republican colleagues.”

The corporate-controlled media as always plays its slavish role. Despite—or more correctly, because of—the explosive character of the revelations in the text messages, the story has been downplayed by major media outlets. As of Tuesday night, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post had even reported the release of the Meadows texts. None of the three broadcast networks—NBC, ABC, CBS—mentioned the story in its evening news program Tuesday.