Imposter Syndrome runs deep in my psyche, but it's always incredible to have one's thinking validated by one of your heroes.
When news of Rep. Chip Roy's and Sen. Mike Lee's text messages to Mark Meadows broke, I sent the following message to my fellow C&L folks:
"I did not have Chip Roy/Mike Lee on my bingo card as standing up to Meadows, tbh"
Then, as life does, news went in a million different directions, and it didn't become anything I followed up on. However, everyone I heard talking about this on TV and elsewhere took these texts as evidence Roy and Lee were die-hard enthusiasts for Trump's lies, and subsequently, the insurrection. This interpretation didn't quite work for me, because I thought the texts sounded as if the two men were raising doubts about Trump's accusations of fraud, not going along with them, but I'm not about to pipe in to defend them as men of great integrity. I just wondered if I'd missed something, or was wrong completely.
Then, two days later, one of my absolute faves, Jill Wine-Banks appears on The Sunday Show to tell Jonathan Capehart the exact same thing that I'd initially thought, with the strength of a legendary legal career behind her.
He asked if those texts were fodder for compelling testimony from them before the January 6th Committee investigating the Insurrection. She said anyone with information should be compelled to testify no matter what their station in the government.
"I do have a slightly different reading of those text messages than many other commentators," she told Capehart.
"I think that they were asking in that, we need ammo. We need fraud examples. They were asking for facts," she continued. "They heard all of the accusations of fraud in the election, but they weren't seeing it. They saw 60 cases being lost in court. They were asking for actual facts."
Wine-Banks went on, "And I think that I'm confirmed in that by the fact that at the end they said, 'This is a s show,' and did not vote to overturn the will of the people because, there was no evidence of any fraud. So I don't quite read it in the same way as everybody else."
She acknowledged that they suggested the counsel of Sidney Powell and John Eastman, but said that was because they were being told over and over again that there was actually fraud.
"There was no fraud. They came to see there was no fraud. And they, both the two text people we're talking about now, Senator Lee and Chip Roy, did not vote to overturn the will of the people. So I read it differently," she told Capehart.
Don't get me wrong. I cannot stand either legislator, and think they'd be absolutely thrilled to see us time-warped back into the 1830s-era civil rights situation. On the other hand, its extremely gratifying to have someone like Jill Wine-Banks validate my interpretation of things, and chip away at that old nag, Imposter Syndrome.
