Sidney Powell’s insane claims about the election being stolen have left judges across the country shaking and scratching their heads. But during a bonkers Oval Office meeting with her on Friday night, President Trump floated the idea of appointing her as a special counsel investigating voter fraud.
Two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to The Daily Beast that Trump and Powell held the Friday meeting to discuss their baseless theories of mass election fraud.
According to The New York Times, which first reported the meeting, some aides were left in shock at Trump’s suggestion of making Powell a special counsel. Even Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s most loyal foot soldier in his election fraud crusade, was against the idea.
ADVERTISEMENT
Powell was reportedly accompanied in the Oval Office by her former client, Michael Flynn, the ex-national security adviser who recently suggested that Trump should invoke martial law to allow the military to “re-run” the election. During the meeting, Trump asked about Flynn’s suggestion, the Times reported.
Powell, who has espoused QAnon beliefs, has spouted numerous convoluted and bizarre election conspiracy theories, too. She has claimed that the 2020 election was rigged by forces from Venezuela, China, and the company that makes voting machines, among others.
Faced with repeated legal losses and no real evidence of massive voter fraud, Powell nonetheless accused other aides of being quitters during the meeting, according to the Times.
A source quoted by CNN on Saturday described the meeting as “ugly” after Powell and Flynn lashed out at others. “It was heated, people were really fighting it out in the Oval,” the source was quoted saying.
Even some of the president’s closest allies vocally opposed some of the insane ideas floated in the meeting. Along with Giuliani, White House counsel Pat Cipollone was against the special counsel idea. Flynn’s idea of invoking martial law was similarly shot down, as was an extraordinary idea for an executive order to seize voting machines, according to the Times, which described the meeting as “raucous.”
Even though Trump’s official legal team and campaign had to disavow Powell weeks ago, the president hasn’t been as eager to cut ties with the conspiracy-theory-spreading MAGA lawyer.
According to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter, in the time since Powell’s ejection from Trump’s legal “strike force,” the president has continued to stay in repeated, direct contact, including over the phone, with Trumpist attorneys Powell and Lin Wood, who have been running their own flailing legal blitzes separate from the legal team. (Powell and Wood’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election are in part funded by Trump friend and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s large donations, as The Daily Beast reported Friday night.)
During his multiple conversations in recent weeks with attorneys like Powell and Wood, Trump has encouraged their work and requested updates, and hasn’t told them to tone it down, much to the annoyance of several of Trump’s closest political lieutenants who see the duo’s endeavors as counterproductive and potentially harmful to Republican Senate candidates in Georgia.
Over the past several weeks, courts have one after another rejected Powell's ludicrous lawsuits, which she’d hyped as the “Kraken.”
One federal judge reminded Powell that judges “do not appoint the president in this country,” while another chided her legal team for undermining America’s democratic voting process without evidence. Dominion Voting Systems, the voting machine company which Powell and other conspiracy theorists have baselessly claimed influenced the 2020 election because of supposed ties to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (who died in 2013), has also sent a cease and desist letter to Powell.
Trump’s campaign staffers were reportedly told by the campaign legal team after the Friday meeting to preserve all documents pertaining to Powell and Dominion Voting systems, apparently in anticipation of a legal showdown.
Read it at The New York Times
