Donald Trump and his associates considered using three different federal agencies to seize voting machines following the 2020 election: the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security.
New reporting in The New York Times and CNN outlines the efforts made to enlist each agency and shows that Trump was heavily involved in the process, even as some of his closest allies believed he was going too far.
In mid-to-late November, Trump told the attorney general at the time, Bill Barr, that voting machines built by Dominion Voting Systems were used to steal the election and that the DOJ should seize them.
The Times writes:
Mr. Barr, who had been briefed extensively at that point by federal law enforcement officials about how the theories being pushed by Mr. Trump’s legal team about the Dominion machines were unfounded, told Mr. Trump that the Justice Department had no basis for seizing the machines because there was no probable cause to believe a crime had been committed.
After being turned down by Barr – who would announce his resignation on December 14th – Trump considered a proposal by a close associate of Michael T. Flynn, the retired general and disgraced former National Security Advisor with a penchant for conspiracy theories.
Retired Army colonel Phil Waldron, who was Flynn’s former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency, proposed using the military to seize the voting machines in question. Flynn and embattled Trump lawyer Sidney Powell brought the idea directly to Trump.
The Times reports:
At the meeting, Mr. Flynn and Ms. Powell presented Mr. Trump with a copy of the draft executive order authorizing the military to oversee the seizure of machines. After reading it, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Giuliani to the Oval Office, according to one person familiar with the matter. When Mr. Giuliani read the draft order, he told Mr. Trump that the military could be used only if there was clear-cut evidence of foreign interference in the election.
Ms. Powell, who had spent the past month filing lawsuits claiming that China and other countries had hacked into voting machines, said she had such evidence, the person said. But Mr. Giuliani was adamant that the military should not be mobilized, the person said, and Mr. Trump ultimately heeded his advice.
A lawyer for Giuliani told CNN, “As soon as he heard about this idea, he was vehemently against it, as was White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and then-President Trump.”
The Times reports that Giuliani went so far as saying that Trump would be impeached over the draft document.
But Waldron simply amended his proposal to indicate that the Department of Homeland Security – instead of the military – should seize the voting machines.
More from The Times:
Around that time, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Giuliani to call Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the acting deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, to ask about the viability of the proposal, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mr. Cuccinelli said that homeland security officials could not take part in the plan.
CNN reports that Trump considered naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate election fraud. When that idea was criticized by his aides, Trump suggested that Cuccinelli could fill that role.
Ultimately, no one was appointed.
The new reporting from The Times is particularly remarkable because it indicates that Trump was desperate to find a way to stay in office, even if that meant sidelining close confidants and gatekeepers:
When Mr. Flynn, Ms. Powell and Mr. Byrne arrived at the White House to discuss their plan to use the military to seize voting machines, they were not let into the Oval Office by a typical gatekeeper, like Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff. Rather, they were escorted in by Garrett Ziegler, a young aide to another Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, according to Mr. Ziegler’s account.
“I waved in General Flynn and Sidney Powell on the Friday night of the 18th — for which Mark Meadows’s office revoked my guest privileges,” Mr. Ziegler said on a podcast, adding that he had done so because he was “frustrated with the current counsel” Mr. Trump was getting.
Even Mr. Giuliani, who had spent weeks peddling some of the most outrageous claims about election fraud, felt that the idea of bringing in the military was beyond the pale.
Last week, POLITICO published the draft document ordering the military to seize the voting machines.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who sits on the House committee investigating the January 6th attack, called it a “lawless document” that is “really breathtaking in its approach.”
“We have a lot of questions about it,” she told CNN.