The Fig Leaf Senator
On the day America kidnapped a head of state, let’s talk about constitutional principles
At approximately 2 a.m. local time on January 3rd, 2026, explosions rocked Caracas. By dawn, President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that the United States had conducted “a large scale strike against Venezuela” and that President Nicolás Maduro and his wife had been “captured and flown out of the Country.”
No declaration of war. No congressional authorization. No consultation with legislative leadership until after the fact. The justification? A DOJ indictment and a bounty.
Later that morning, Utah’s senior senator—a man who has built his entire political brand on constitutional limits to executive power, a man who wrote a book called “Our Lost Constitution”—was asked about the operation. Senator Mike Lee’s response was that he “looked forward to learning what might constitutionally justify” the action.
Not opposition. Not concern. Not even skepticism. Just a request for the talking points he’ll need to say yes.
This is who Mike Lee is. This is who he has always been. And Utahns deserve to understand the pattern.
The Pedigree
Mike Lee comes from Mormon legal royalty. His father, Rex E. Lee, was the founding dean of BYU’s law school and served as Solicitor General under Ronald Reagan. His brother sits on the Utah Supreme Court. Mike himself clerked for Samuel Alito—twice, once on the Third Circuit and once on the Supreme Court.
He attended his father’s arguments before the Supreme Court as a child. He absorbed constitutional law the way other kids absorbed Saturday morning cartoons. When he talks about Article I powers and separation of powers and the Founders’ intent, he’s not performing. This is genuinely who he is.
Which makes his repeated capitulations all the more damning.
The Tea Party Constitutional Scholar
Lee rode the Tea Party wave into the Senate in 2010, ousting incumbent Republican Bob Bennett by running to his right on fiscal conservatism and constitutional originalism. His early record showed flashes of genuine principle. He voted against the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act because it allowed indefinite detention of American citizens suspected of terrorism. He supported the 2013 government shutdown. He positioned himself as the Senate’s constitutional conscience.
In 2016, he refused to endorse Donald Trump. He voted for Evan McMullin instead. He expressed concern about Trump acting as an “authoritarian” or “autocrat.”
Then Trump won.
The Transformation
What happened next was a four-year tutorial in principle meeting power.
Somewhat to his credit, Lee did occasionally remember his constitutional commitments. When Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, Lee emerged from the classified briefing visibly angry, calling it the worst military briefing he’d seen in his nine years in the Senate. He criticized the administration for suggesting that congressional authorization was unnecessary. For a moment, the constitutional scholar reappeared.
But by October 2020, that man was gone. At a Trump rally in Arizona, Lee told the crowd: “To my Mormon friends, my Latter-day Saint friends, think of him as Captain Moroni.” For those unfamiliar, Captain Moroni is one of the most revered figures in the Book of Mormon—a righteous military leader who fought for freedom and raised the “Title of Liberty” against tyranny. Lee was comparing Donald Trump to a scriptural hero, a man who in the text literally refuses to seek power and fights against corrupt kings.
The comparison was so absurd, so theologically illiterate, that it offended Latter-day Saints across the political spectrum. This wasn’t just political sycophancy—it was blasphemous overreach, the kind of thing that makes your Mormon neighbors wince and look away.
Somewhere between the Soleimani briefing and the Captain Moroni speech, Mike Lee made his choice. Constitutional limits on executive power mattered—except when they didn’t. Scriptural integrity mattered—except when it didn’t.
Two months later, he was texting Mark Meadows about alternate slates of electors.
The January 6th Record
This is where the mask slipped entirely.
Text messages between Lee and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, obtained by the January 6th Committee, reveal that Lee wasn’t merely “monitoring” efforts to overturn the 2020 election, as he later claimed. He was an active participant.
On November 7th, 2020, Lee texted Meadows Sidney Powell’s phone number and email, complaining she wasn’t being given access to Trump. He called her “a straight shooter.”
On December 8th, Lee texted: “If a very small handful of states were to have their legislatures appoint alternative slates of delegates, there could be a path.”
On January 3rd—three days before the insurrection—Lee brought up the alternate electors idea three more times, arguing “everything changes” if states embrace that strategy.
On January 4th, after Trump publicly criticized him at a rally, Lee texted Meadows: “I’ve been spending 14 hours a day for the last week trying to unravel this for him.”
Fourteen hours a day. Trying to find a constitutional justification for overturning an election.
He only backed off when it became clear there was no legal path that wouldn’t blow up catastrophically. He even texted Meadows that his “friend Ted” Cruz and Josh Hawley were being “self-serving” by pushing to object to the election results—not because it was wrong, but because it wouldn’t work.
In the end, Lee voted to certify. Then he spent years claiming he had merely been “investigating rumors.” When confronted with his own texts during his 2022 debate with Evan McMullin, he simply lied about what they showed.
The texts prove he knew exactly what was happening. He knew it was constitutionally unjustifiable. And he tried anyway—right up until the moment it became clear he’d be left holding the bag.
The Public Lands Crusade
If January 6th was Lee’s most visible betrayal of principle, his crusade against federal public lands has been his most persistent.
Utah is approximately 63% federally managed land. Lee has spent his entire Senate career trying to change that—not for Utahns, but for the extractive industries that have been salivating over that land for decades.
In 2011, his first year in office, he introduced a bill to sell federal land, saying “there is no critical need for the federal government to hold onto it.” In 2013, he demanded the transfer of federal lands to Utah, accusing the Bureau of Land Management of “obvious abuse.” In a 2018 speech, he compared federal land managers—and people who recreate on public acreage—to “feudal lords.”
In June 2025, Lee proposed legislation that would have made over 18 million acres of Utah’s public land eligible for sale. The eligible areas included popular hiking trails, ski resorts, and backcountry areas in the Wasatch Front—Big Cottonwood Canyon, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Mill Creek Canyon. Land surrounding Utah’s “Mighty Five” national parks was marked eligible.
The backlash was ferocious. Hunters, anglers, outdoor recreation groups, even his own conservative base opposed him. Lee withdrew the amendment, blaming Senate procedural rules rather than the overwhelming opposition.
Just weeks ago, in December 2025, he tried again—introducing an amendment that would have removed language affirming that national parks are federal lands staffed by federal employees. He backed down after another outcry, but continues to push for stripping congressional oversight of the Interior Department.
The pattern is clear: keep throwing proposals at the wall until one sticks. Claim you’re fighting for “local control” while the actual beneficiaries are mining and drilling interests. When caught, blame procedure and try again.
The Legitimacy Launderer
Here’s what makes Mike Lee more dangerous than a pure opportunist like Ted Cruz or a shameless Trump sycophant like Lindsey Graham.
Lee actually believes he has principles. He can articulate constitutional theory. He writes books about the Founders. When he finds a justification for supporting something he knows is wrong, he doesn’t just mouth the words—he convinces himself.
This makes him useful in a way the obvious hacks aren’t. When Mike Lee says something is constitutional, it carries weight precisely because people believe he cares about such things. He’s not a rubber stamp; he’s a legitimacy launderer.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Lee that the Venezuela strikes were conducted to “protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant.” See? It’s not an act of war—it’s law enforcement. We had an indictment! A warrant! We were just serving papers. With airstrikes. On a sovereign nation’s capital. To arrest their president.
Lee said the action “likely falls within” Article II authority.
He’s already most of the way to yes. He just needed the fig leaf.
He always finds the fig leaf.
What It Means
Today, the United States military is conducting operations in Venezuela. A head of state is in custody on a Navy vessel, being transported to New York to face charges. The precedent being set is that the executive branch can conduct military strikes on any nation and kidnap any leader, as long as the DOJ indicts them first.
No declaration of war. No congressional authorization. No debate.
And Utah’s senior senator—the constitutional scholar, the Tea Party originalist, the man who voted against indefinite detention of American citizens, the man who worried about Trump being an “autocrat”—is looking forward to learning what might justify it.
The constitution Mike Lee claims to defend has specific provisions for this. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to declare war. The War Powers Resolution requires congressional notification within 48 hours and limits military action to 60 days without authorization. The Founders were explicit: the decision to commit American forces to war belongs to the legislature, not the executive.
Mike Lee knows this. He’s known it his entire life. He watched his father argue constitutional law before the Supreme Court.
But knowing and doing are different things. Principle and convenience are different things. And when it matters—when the pressure is on, when the party demands loyalty, when the fig leaf is offered—Mike Lee takes the fig leaf.
Every single time.
For Utah
I’ve lived in this state long enough to know that Utahns value integrity. They respect people who stand by their principles even when it’s hard. They don’t like being played for fools.
Mike Lee has been playing us for fools for fifteen years.
He tells us he’s a constitutional conservative, then spends fourteen hours a day trying to overturn an election. He tells us he’s fighting for Utah, then tries to sell off the public lands we hunt and fish and hike on. He tells us he cares about executive overreach, then rubber-stamps military strikes on sovereign nations.
In 2022, he won reelection with just 53% of the vote—against an independent with no party infrastructure, in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1970. That’s a vulnerable incumbent. That’s a senator who knows his brand is fraying.
The next time someone runs against Mike Lee, remember this moment. Remember that on the day America conducted military strikes on Venezuela and kidnapped its president, our constitutional scholar senator asked to be given a reason to say yes.
And remember: he always finds one.
Postscript, 11 a.m. EST:
As I was finishing this piece, President Trump held his press conference from Mar-a-Lago. Within minutes of announcing that American forces had captured the president of Venezuela, that “a certain expertise” had turned off the lights of Caracas, and that American oil companies would “rebuild” Venezuela’s industry, he had drifted into rambling about the National Guard in Washington DC and crime statistics.
He couldn’t maintain focus on the war he just started for a single press conference.
This is the executive authority Mike Lee will find a way to justify.
Utah’s Other Senator
See the article linked below; 2026.01.28
