They were running out of time and needed a Hail Mary.
Joe Biden had won the electoral college vote in the 2020 presidential election. And with less than three weeks before Congress was set to certify the results on Jan. 6, 2021, allies of then-President Trump met with him in the Oval Office to discuss taking desperate measures.
Following dozens of failed challenges to the election in court, and with plans to ask lawmakers to throw out some state results, Trump operatives including former national security advisor Michael Flynn drafted an executive order intended to allow the administration to seize voting machines. To the horror of White House lawyers, the president was being urged to sign it.
Named in two drafts of the order to help justify the seizure was Coffee County, Ga., where officials had refused to certify the results of the presidential election — a clear indicator there had been fraud, Trump’s allies argued. A last gasp in the frantic efforts to keep Trump in office, the eventual breach of election systems in the rural southeastern Georgia county would go on to become a critical part of the sweeping racketeering indictment filed in Atlanta in August alleging a broad conspiracy by the former president and 18 co-defendants.
Together, depositions and other court documents, testimony to the House Select Jan. 6 Committee and public statements made by those involved provideone of the most comprehensive accounts to date of what happened in Coffee County —and the role it played in the final days of the futile endeavor to ensure Trump remained in the White House.
As the now-infamous Dec. 18 Oval Office gathering devolved into a chaotic, hours-long shouting match between Trump operatives and the White House lawyers, Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani stepped in to wave the president off from signing the executive order. “Voluntary access” to a Georgia voting system was in the works, Giuliani told Trump, according to testimony before the Jan. 6 committee, making the order unnecessary.
It was part of a new strategy, Giuliani said on former Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast the next day, to use evidence obtained from voting machines to circumvent Republican governors — like Brian Kemp of Georgia — who were unwilling to continue investigating allegations of fraud. “Just push ’em aside,” Giuliani said.
It’s unclear whether Giuliani noted where in Georgia that access would be provided. But shortly before the contentious Oval Office meeting, he had met with an unnamed “whistleblower” a block away at the storied Willard InterContinental Washington. Giuliani associate Bernard Kerik paid for that person’s room…..