Trump had role in weighing proposals to seize voting machines

The new accounts show that Trump was more directly involved than previously known in exploring proposals to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines as he grasped unsuccessfully for evidence of fraud that would help him reverse his defeat in the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the episodes.

The existence of proposals to use at least three federal departments to assist Trump’s attempt to stay in power has been publicly known. The proposals involving the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security were codified by advisers in the form of draft executive orders.

But the new accounts provide fresh insight into how the former president considered and to some degree pushed the plans, which would have taken the United States into uncharted territory by using federal authority to seize control of the voting systems run by states on baseless grounds of widespread voting fraud.

The people familiar with the matter were briefed on the events by participants or had firsthand knowledge of them.

The accounts about the voting machines emerged after a weekend when Trump declared at a rally in Texas that he might pardon people charged in connection with the storming of the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, if he were reelected. In a statement issued after the rally, Trump also suggested that his vice president, Mike Pence, could have personally “overturned the election” by refusing to count delegates to the Electoral College who had vowed to cast their votes for Joe Biden.

The new information helps to flesh out how the draft executive orders to seize voting machines came into existence and points in particular to the key role played by a retired Army colonel named Phil Waldron.

According to people familiar with the accounts, Waldron, shortly after the election, began telling associates that he had found irregularities in vote results that he felt were suggestive of fraud. He then came up with the idea of having a federal agency like the military or the Department of Homeland Security confiscate the machines to preserve evidence.

Waldron first proposed the notion of the Pentagon’s involvement to Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, whom he says he served with in the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn speaks during the daily news briefing at the White House, in Washington. (AP/File)

The plans were among an array of options that were placed before Trump in the tumultuous days and weeks that followed the election, developed by an ad hoc group of lawyers like Sidney Powell and other allies including Flynn and Waldron. That group often found itself at odds with Giuliani and his longtime associate Bernard Kerik, as well as with Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and his team.

Around the same time that Trump brought up the possibility of having the Justice Department seize the voting machines, for example, he also tried to persuade state lawmakers in contested states like Michigan and Pennsylvania to use local law enforcement agencies to take control of them, people familiar with the matter said. The state lawmakers refused to go along with the plan.

The meeting with Barr took place in mid to late November when Trump raised the idea of whether the Justice Department could be used to seize machines, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump told Barr that his lawyers had told him that the department had the power to seize machines as evidence of fraud.

Trump mentioned a specific state that had used machines built by Dominion Voting Systems, where his lawyers believed there had been fraud, although it is unclear which state Trump was referring to. Barr, who had been briefed extensively at that point by federal law enforcement officials about how the theories being pushed by Trump’s legal team about the Dominion machines were unfounded, told 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.

It was only after several early options were exhausted that Waldron pitched the idea of using other parts of the federal government to seize the machines to both Giuliani and members of the Trump legal team, and to Flynn and his own associates, including Powell and Patrick Byrne, a wealthy business executive who funded many of the efforts to challenge the election.

Waldron, who owns a bar and distillery outside Austin, Texas, was previously best known for having circulated a 38-page PowerPoint presentation to lawmakers and White House aides that was filled with extreme plans to overturn the election.

Giuliani was vehemently opposed to the idea of the military taking part in the seizure of machines, according to two people familiar with the matter. The conflict between him and his legal team, and Flynn, Powell and Byrne came to a dramatic head-on Dec 18, 2020, during a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office.

At the meeting, Flynn and Powell presented Trump with a copy of the draft executive order authorising the military to oversee the seizure of machines. After reading it, Trump summoned Giuliani to the Oval Office, according to one person familiar with the matter. When Giuliani read the draft order, he told Trump that the military could be used only if there was clear-cut evidence of foreign interference in the election.

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 Giuliani was adamant that the military should not be mobilised, the person said, and Trump ultimately heeded his advice.

Shortly after the Oval Office meeting, Waldron amended the draft executive order, suggesting that if the Defense Department could not oversee the seizure of machines then the Department of Homeland Security could, the person said.

Around that time, Trump asked Giuliani to call Kenneth  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. Cuccinelli said that homeland security officials could not take part in the plan.

All of this was playing out amid open acrimony among White House aides and outside advisers about how best — and how far — to proceed with efforts to pursue Trump’s claims of fraud in the election. That same month, during a meeting on another matter, Trump asked Cuccinelli what he thought of appointing a special counsel to investigate election fraud. Cuccinelli, according to two people briefed on the conversation, said it was not a good idea for a variety of reasons.

When Flynn, Powell and 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, Trump’s chief of staff. Rather, they were escorted in by Garrett Ziegler, a young aide to another Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, according to Ziegler’s account.

“I waved in Gen. Flynn and Sidney Powell on the Friday night of the 18th — for which Mark Meadows’ office revoked my guest privileges,” Ziegler said on a podcast, adding that he had done so because he was “frustrated with the current counsel” Trump was getting.

Even 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.

After Flynn and Powell left the Oval Office, according to a person familiar with the matter, Giuliani predicted that the plans they were proposing were going to get Trump impeached.