During a White House meeting on Friday, President-elect Donald Trump raised the idea of naming Biden as a special adviser to conservative attorney Sidney Powell to investigate his election deficit, according to several media reports.
Who was in the Oval Office meeting First reported by the New York Times, Trump discussesPowell’s appointment with his advisers to investigate allegations of electoral fraud and the possible seizure of voting machines that Trump has claimed were bullied.
Many advisers at the White House, including Powell, disagreed. According to the Times, among those who objected to Powell’s special adviser’s suggestion were Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani – who joined by phone – White House Counsel Pat Sipolon and staffer Mark Meadows.
Accordingly Politico, The debate heated up and voices were raised.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment by USA Today.
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Powell had previously worked with the campaign Challenge the selection Results for several major states, including Michigan. But Giuliani and Trump’s campaign attorney Jenna Ellis eventually Campaign away Powell when he publicly made many complex and baseless allegations of electoral fraud.
Gilliani and Alice said in a statement last month that “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is not even a lawyer for the president in her personal capacity.”
Powell made a baseless claim that a conspiracy was hatched against Trump to rig the voting machines, including thousands of pollsters, the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the CIA and the Chinese Communists.
Citing two people present at the meeting, the Times reported that Trump had offered Powell security clearance to investigate his suspicions.
Trump continued to claim that he had won the election, made baseless voter fraud claims and tried to reverse the results. Powell, along with other staunch supporters and allies of the president, has raised and echoed his allegations of fraud.
A special adviser must be appointed by the Attorney General or an act of Congress. But the Associated Press reports that Trump recently asked his team of lawyers, including Giulini. Does the president have power? To hire yourself.
The idea of appointing Powell as special counsel came after the announcement of the resignation of Attorney General William Barr. The president said Barr, who announced the Justice Department, had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud and would step down on December 23.
According to the Times, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was also in attendance at the White House, where Trump asked him about the idea of seeking martial law, according to the Times. The Wall Street Journal And CNN He said the idea of martial law had been discussed, but did not specify who raised it or how Trump viewed it. All reports agree that the suggestion was rejected.
An interview with New News Zmax on Thursday. Flynn, meanwhile, said that by enforcing martial law, Trump could “immediately seize every one of them across the country on his orders,” citing voting machines that Trump’s claims bullied him.
Flynn also said Trump would use “military capabilities” if he wanted to “actually hold re-elections in each of the states” that Biden had narrowly won.
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Phillyn was recently pardoned by Trump for lying to the FBI. He was represented by Powell in an attempt to overturn his guilty plea.
During Friday’s Oval Office meeting, both Powell and Flynn told Trump and the administration to do more to reverse the election results and Biden’s victory.
In response to Flynn’s request for martial law, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Chief of Staff General James McNeville issued a joint statement saying “the US military has no role to play in determining the outcome of a US election.”