Fox News host Sean Hannity exchanged more than 80 texts messages with Mark Meadows, then-President Donald Trump's White House chief of staff, between Election Day 2020 and President Biden's inauguration.
According to messages released Friday by CNN, Hannity supported Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, telling Meadows it was "mathematically impossible" for Biden to have received as many votes as he had.
Hannity, whom CNN described as a "shadow chief of staff" to Trump, also warned Meadows about some of the "fing lunatics" pushing the then-president's stolen election claims. "They are NOT helping [Trump]. I'm fed up with these people," Hannity wrote on Dec. 22, 2020.
Hannity did not mention who these "lunatics" were, but he may have been referring to attorney Sidney Powell, who repeatedly made bizarre and false claims that corrupt voting machine companies had switched millions of votes from Trump to Biden. The day before Hannity sent his message, The New York Times reported that Powell had visited the White House "for [the] third time in four days," despite Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani's previous attempts to distance the Trump campaign from Powell.
Read all the messages between Meadows and Hannity here.