With his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud rejected by dozens of judges and GOP leaders, President Trump has turned to a ragtag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power after his election loss.
The president’s orbit has grown more extreme as his more mainstream allies, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have declined to endorse his increasingly radical plans to overturn the will of the voters. Trump’s unofficial election advisory council now includes a felon, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a White House trade adviser and a Russian agent’s former lover.
Members of the group assembled in the Oval Office on Friday for a marathon meeting that lasted more than four hours and included discussion of tactics ranging from imposing martial law in swing states to seizing voting machines through executive fiat. The meeting exploded into shouting matches as outside advisers and White House aides clashed over the lack of a cohesive strategy and disagreed about the constitutionality of some of the proposed solutions….
Monday’s meeting at the White House followed an Oval Office gathering Friday that was one of the most contentious yet of Trump’s seven-week post-election push to reverse his fate.
Gathered around the Resolute Desk on Friday were: Sidney Powell, the lawyer who has promoted a baseless allegation that hostile nations manipulated voting machines to flip votes for Biden; Michael Flynn, the recently pardoned former national security adviser who has publicly suggested invoking martial law to “basically rerun an election”; former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne, who now promotes election conspiracy theories; and White House officials including Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Staff Secretary Derek Lyons and Counsel Pat Cipollone. Giuliani joined the meeting by phone.AD
Over several hours, the Oval Office erupted into raucous acrimony as the outside advisers proposed a number of extreme measures for reversing the results while the White House officials pointed out that such actions would be unconstitutional or otherwise unworkable.
Powell and others told the president Friday that they had evidence that voting machines had been tampered with, though White House officials said the evidence was nonsense. But Powell’s presence in the West Wing — and her multiple returns for additional meetings, including on Monday — are an indication that the outsiders are gaining sway.
Powell had been publicly dismissed from Trump’s legal team last month, with several Trump advisers saying the president thought a conspiracy-filled news conference she held Nov. 19 had been too outlandish. Trump has since gravitated back to her because other advisers are not giving him any paths to victory — and she claims to have paths, aides said. During the meeting Friday, Trump considered naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud, officials said.
Giuliani proposed that the federal government seize and inspect voting machines from states where the president is challenging his loss.
Flynn, who had said on Newsmax the previous day that Trump could order the military to rerun the election in key swing states, was on hand to discuss his idea.
White House aides pushed back strongly on the idea of invoking martial law, officials said, but the raw feelings from the meeting have since spilled into public view.
Powell, who has repeatedly told the president that his aides are too timorous and should be taking stronger steps, has taken some of her criticism public since the meeting.