WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump named lawyer Sidney Powell, who was started from his campaign’s legal team after pushing baseless conspiracy theories, as a special counsel investigating voter fraud allegations while reaching for straw to stay in power.
At a meeting at the White House on Friday, Trump went so far as to discuss obtaining a Powell security clearance, said two people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation.
Trump’s even cherishing the idea of installing Powell underscores the increasingly desperate steps he has weighed as he tries to reverse the results of the November 3 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has entertained conspiracy theories and bizarre plans to remain in office, spurred by allies such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.
It’s unclear whether Trump plans to proceed with the attempt to install Powell. Under federal law, the US Attorney General, not the President, is responsible for appointing special advisers. And countless Republicans, from outgoing Attorney General William Barr to state governors and election officials, have said time and again that there is no evidence of the kind of massive voter fraud Trump has claimed unfounded in the weeks since he lost. Friday’s meeting was first reported by The New York Times.
In addition to losing the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, Trump decisively lost the electoral college to Biden, 306 votes to 232.
Trump’s campaign and his allies have now filed about 50 lawsuits for alleged widespread voting fraud, and nearly all have been dismissed or dropped. Trump has lost to judges from both political parties, including some he has appointed, and some of the strongest reprimands have come from conservative Republicans. The Supreme Court has also declined to hear two cases – decisions Trump has scorned.
With no further tenable legal narrative, Trump has allies looking for options because he refuses to accept his loss.
That includes Giuliani, who at Friday’s rally urged Trump to confiscate voting machines in his search for evidence of fraud. However, the Department of Homeland Security made it clear that it was not authorized to do so. It is also unclear what that would accomplish.
Barr told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this month that the Justice and Homeland Security Departments have looked into claims that voting machines were “ essentially programmed to bias the election results … and so far we’ve seen nothing to substantiate that Paper ballots are also held under federal law and have been used to verify results, including in Georgia, which conducted two ballot audits using backups of paper ballots.
Flynn, who recently pardoned Trump for lying to the FBI, went even further and suggested that Trump could impose martial law and use the military to hold the election again. Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone voiced their objections, those familiar with the rally said.
Powell was initially part of the president’s legal team, but was started after a bizarre press conference with Giuliani in which she made a series of bizarre allegations about electoral fraud, including an allegation that election software was made in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chavez” Venezuelan president who died in 2013.
In interviews and appearances, Powell continued to make misleading statements about the voting process, unfurled unsupported and complex conspiracy theories involving communist regimes, and vowed to “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” lawsuit.
Trump’s team soon announced that it had cut ties with Powell. “She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. Nor is she an attorney for the president in his personal capacity, ” Giuliani and another Trump attorney, Jenna Ellis, said in a statement.
Dominion Voting Systems, a specific target of Powell, has also demanded that they retract the “wild” and “knowingly baseless” allegations about the voting machine company and threatened to sue for defamation.
Since retiring from the campaign, Powell has continued to file a lawsuit on Trump’s behalf, in conjunction with Conservative Georgia attorney L. Lin Wood.
Powell and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
___
Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.