Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt:
He has otherwise sequestered himself in the White House, playing host to a cast of conspiracy theorists and hard-core supporters who traffic in ideas like challenging the election’s outcome in Congress and even invoking martial law, seeking to give some of them government jobs….
Most of his advisers believe Mr. Trump will depart the White House for a final time by Jan. 20. The pardons he announced Tuesday night suggest he is comfortable using his powers aggressively until then. But how far he will go to subvert the election results, actually refuse to leave the White House or to unleash a wave of unilateral policy decisions in his final weeks is hard to discern.
Still, his erratic behavior and detachment from his duties have even some of his most loyal aides and advisers deeply concerned.
For the moment, Mr. Trump has told advisers he’s willing to stop listening to Sidney Powell, the lawyer who has appealed to him by peddling a conspiracy theory about the election, and people like Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com, who was present for a wild, nearly five-hour meeting in the Oval Office and then the presidential residence last Friday….
Mr. Trump has turned to aides like Peter Navarro, a trade adviser who has been trying to gather evidence of election fraud to bolster his boss’s claims. And he is listening to Republicans who insist that Vice President Mike Pence could help sway the election during the normally routine process of ratifying the election early next month, despite the fact that it isn’t realistically possible.
Among Republicans on Capitol Hill, there is talk of clamping down on any of his supporters who might try to disrupt that process, a possibility made real by the president’s importuning of Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville of Alabama to gum up the works.
Yet it is not certain that Mr. Tuberville will carry through the president’s desires, and even he if does, there is the possibility that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, could step in to prevent such a move. Mr. McConnell has already urged his caucus not to raise objections when the results are certified, because it would force others to publicly vote against the president.