Heated Oval Office meeting included talk of special counsel, martial law as Trump advisers clash
Category: News & Politics
Via: sister-mary-agnes-ample-bottom • 4 years ago • 59 commentsBy: Kevin Liptak and Pamela Brown (MSN)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Heated Oval Office meeting included talk of special counsel, martial law as Trump advisers clash
President Donald Trump convened a heated meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, including lawyer Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, two people familiar with the matter said, describing a session that began as an impromptu gathering but devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points as some of Trump's aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn's more outrageous suggestions about overturning the election.
Flynn had suggested earlier this week that Trump could invoke martial law as part of his efforts to overturn the election that he lost to President-elect Joe Biden -- an idea that arose again during the meeting in the Oval Office, one of the people said. It wasn't clear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room forcefully pushed back and shot it down.
The meeting was first reported by the New York Times.
White House aides who participated in the meeting, including White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and counsel Pat Cipollone, also pushed back intensely on the suggestion of naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud allegations Trump's own administration has dismissed (or, as seems more feasible, hiring her in the administration for some kind of investigatory role). Powell has focused her conspiracies on voting machines and has floated the notion of having a special counsel inspect the machines for flaws.
Another idea floated in the meeting was an executive order that would permit the government to access voting machines to inspect them.
One person described the meeting as "ugly" as Powell and Flynn accused others of abandoning the President as he works to overturn the results of the election.
"It was heated -- people were really fighting it out in the Oval, really forceful about it," one of the sources said.
One of the sources described an escalating sense of concern among Trump's aides, even those who have weathered his previous controversies, about what steps he might take next as his term comes to an end.
Shortly after that meeting, Trump's campaign staff received a memo from the campaign legal team on Saturday instructing them to preserve all documents related to Dominion Voting Systems and Powell in anticipation of potential litigation by the company against the pro-Trump attorney.
The memo, viewed by CNN, references a letter Dominion sent to Powell this week demanding she publicly retract her accusations and instructs campaign staff not to alter, destroy or discard records that could be relevant.
A serious internal divide has formed within Trump's campaign following the election with tensions at their highest between the campaign's general counsel, Matt Morgan, who sent the memo Saturday, and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Though the campaign once distanced itself from Powell, Trump has been urging other people to fight like she has, according to multiple people familiar with his remarks. He has asked for more people making her arguments, which are often baseless and filled with conspiracy theories, on television.
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Heated Oval Office meeting included talk of special counsel, martial law as Trump advisers clash
The 'brain trust' convened.
The 'brain trust' convened
Since none were masked and there was screaming, I think you meant covined.
Maybe, bovined?
Ha!!!
With an extra helping of covfefe.
two people familiar with the matter said.....
More fake news
Yup, unidentified sources- the lame stream medias' go to in all thing Trump.
Click bait for the TDS suffering left and never Trumpers.
They seriously are going to last until he leaves office.
Keep digging deeper in that sand and keep saying fake news.
Calling videos from different cameras and networks "fake news" is insane.
There's more than a little sense of desperation there.....
Hehehe
Exactly which part do you view as 'fake news' Greg?
Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn are the headliners in a group called We The People Convention . They are swinging from the rafters calling on Trump to declare martial law and force the US to hold another election. Flynn tweeted about it here . So Sidney and Mike swing by the White House to chat up Trump. Chief of Staff Mark Kelly and attorney Pat Cipollone are alerted to the impromptu meeting and decide to join the conversation. The last thing they need at this point is for two huckleberries to reignite Trump's bogus, yet still smoldering, voter fraud claims. Of course there is going to be a heated discussion. At this point, most people just want to get through this nightmare and move on.
All far right wingers scream "fake news" anytime they are caught lying.
That and
reported by the New York Times
Proof that this "meeting" is total bs.
martial law = open season on trumpsters
Probably not gonna happen, [Deleted]
I hope they fall off the edge of the earth.... I mean, I know there is no edge, but still
Oh, I could find one.
I consider Niagra falls and the Continental divide to be great edges, lol.
Antarctica is now an edge that can't be ignored.
El Capitan comes to mind...
no such place.
There is however a Berthoud Pass. It is a high mountain pass in central Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains of the western United States.
Sure they do.../s
as a life long resident of Colorado, I've driven over it countless times.
yeah, first I've heard of it ...
People often use different names for some things....ie - San Fran or Frisco for San Francisco, which totally pisses of the locals. Thank you for the info.
I think I did once a long time ago when I had training in CO. I was only one of two people who took their POV's so I did some road trips while I was there.
It looks like Sidney Alternative Universe Powell seems to still have a place in the administration.
Kind of fitting and I soon expect to see her, Rudy, and Trump holding hands as the Three Stooges.
I expect the stooges to be standing in front of a judge.
OMG make it stop !!! These people have literally lost their minds.
Conservatives should be so proud ! snort
President*** Trump wants to put Sidney Powell, the crack pot Q Anon conspiracy theorist lawyer in charge of investigating election fraud in the swing states.
No, you are not seeing things.
Both the New York Times and Politico are reporting a wild Friday afternoon meeting at the White House attended by Powell, the loose cannon Q Anon ex general Michael Flynn , who is advising Trump to use the military to force a new presidential election in Georgia and Wisconsin , and Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani reportedly opposes using the military but still wants Trump's Dept of Homeland Security to confiscate all the voting machines in the swing states.
Who will stand up to Trump as he loses his mind in front of the whole world ?
All of us.
Count me in!
Trumpism will likely get worse before it gets better.
Might not be necessary-- he's obviously been quite emotionally ill forsome time....and now it looks like he's getter closer and closer to a complete breakdown every day.
(In fact, while many people are saying that he will go to prison after he's out of office...there's a good change he may avoid prison by being incarcerated in a mental institution.
Trump likes Walter Reed. He can command Drs. to say what he wants them to.
Sadly, I doubt him having a breakdown would put an end to the support of his base. I swear, if he got in front of a camera in the Oval Office right now and said that he was actually on a spaceship orbiting the Earth, being anally probed by little green men, there are some people who would immediately call on the Space Force Guardians to go rescue him.
How would anyone be able to tell? His base doesn't care as long as he can be lead to a desk and handed a sharpie so he can sign onto their agenda.
I honestly don't know how "breakdown" would differ from "baseline". Seems to me he's already batshit, and has been for a while.
Total karma would be if he strokes out (not on his golf courses) and with his diet and obesity, it is a possibility.
Thankfully, liberals don't tend to be assassins. We bitch and moan and vote.
nymag.com /intelligencer/2020/12/trump-coup-sidney-powell-martial-law-michael-flynn-meltdown.html
Trump Floats Coup Plan That’s So Wild Even Rudy Giuliani Is Terrified
Together again. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
At the White House on Friday, President Trump held what may have been his most deranged meeting yet. In it, the president raged at his loyalists for betraying him, and discussed taking extralegal measures to overturn the election.
The meeting, first reported by the New York Times , included lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, convicted felon Michael Flynn, and Rudy Giuliani. One plan floated at the meeting was for Trump to appoint Powell as a “special counsel” overseeing allegations of voter fraud. Powell’s voter fraud claims are so fantastical she has been mocked even by other far-right legal conspiracy theorists. Andrew McCarthy, a former birther and author of one book titled How Obama Embraces Islam’s Sharia Agenda and another calling for his impeachment on multiple counts, has described Powell’s vote-fraud claims as “loopy.”
Trump also reportedly brought up Flynn’s proposal, which he has expounded on cable news, to impose martial law and direct the military to hold a new election. “At one point in the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump asked about that idea,” reports the Times .
Political scientists have debated whether it is accurate to describe Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as a “coup,” an “autogolpe,” or neither. Trump’s interest in deploying the military to cancel an election he clearly lost certainly seems to resolve that debate, at least in terms of his intent.
There is no reason to believe Trump commands the power to actually implement any of these wild ideas. Trump’s best chance to steal the election was to have the decisive voting margin in the Electoral College determined by the counting of mail-in ballots that were mailed before, but arrived after Election Day. This would have let him either persuade the Republican-controlled Supreme Court to invalidate those decisive ballots, or Republican-controlled state legislators to disregard their state’s voting results and appoint pro-Trump electors to represent their state.
But the election was not close enough for him to pursue either strategy, whatever chance he had for some kind of Bush v. Gore replay has passed. The measures he is now contemplating lie outside the normal framework for resolving election disputes, and would require, at minimum, almost uniform levels of GOP support.
Trump does not have that. Indeed the striking thing is that he is veering to positions so extreme and self-defeating that even his loyalists have blanched. Perhaps the most alarming fact about the Friday meeting is that Giuliani, who has spent months spreading fantastical claims of imagined voter fraud, became a quasi-voice of reason. Giuliani has proposed using the Department of Homeland Security to seize and examine voting machines — a move the Department has resisted — but even Giuliani opposes appointing a nutter like Powell.
One theme running through Trump World reporting in recent weeks is that the president has increasingly tuned out any advisers or friends who try to reason him toward accepting defeat. Friday’s meeting devolved into a loyalty contest, with “yelling and screaming,” and competing lawyers “often accusing each other of failing to sufficiently support the president’s efforts,” reports Politico.
Reporters are emphasizing that it isn’t just the usual Republicans who have always privately worried about Trump who express concern. Advisers fret that Trump “is spending too much time with people they consider crackpots or conspiracy theorists,” reports Jonathan Swan . The “too much time” line captures the extremely relative nature of the schism. It’s apparently well and good for Trump to spend some time with crackpots and conspiracy theorists — just not too much time. Even Trump’s hardened loyalists sound genuinely worried:
In all likelihood, their concern is not some scenario where tanks roll down the streets or Trump blockades himself in the Oval Office on January 20 like Al Pacino in the last scene of Scarface . It’s that Trump will spin so completely out of control that he discredits them, or puts the Georgia special election at risk. The crazies are turning on the crazier.
Is there any doubt now that the 25th needs to be evoked?
www.politico.com /news/2020/12/19/sidney-powell-trump-special-counsel-448694
Trump sought to tap Sidney Powell as special counsel for election fraud
Attorney Sidney Powelll has amplified calls for President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. | AP Photo/Ben Margot
President Donald Trump escalated his bid to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election during a contentious White House meeting on Friday night — telling advisers he wanted to name a special counsel to investigate his loss and pressing for the seizure of voting machines he has falsely suggested were manipulated to rig the outcome against him.
As the clock ticks down on the remainder of the president's term, top officials are growing alarmed by his fixation with reversing his defeat, according to a senior administration official. Many are concerned that he is turning to fringe characters for advice and support, this person added, while dismissing the views of officials who have expressed skepticism about the effort.
Another person familiar with the Oval Office meeting said it included Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani as well as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has suggested in recent days that the president could invoke martial law as he seeks to pursue baseless allegations of voter fraud.
In one heated exchange, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows pushed back against the idea of tapping Sidney Powell — an attorney who has promoted numerous conspiracy theories about the election — as a special counsel to probe the claims.
Giuliani also has urged top Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli to confiscate voting machines, a request Cuccinelli has turned down because he lack the authority to do so, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
The Friday meeting was first reported by the New York Times , and Giuliani's lobbying effort was first reported by the Times and Axios.
Powell, a conservative firebrand who represented Flynn in his long-running fight against a criminal charge for lying to the FBI, has amplified calls for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that enables the president to deploy troops to suppress domestic uprisings. Since early November, Powell has spearheaded a wide-ranging legal campaign to overturn the 2020 election results that has been sharply rejected in courts across the country.
According to the person familiar with Friday’s meeting, the animated gathering featured yelling and screaming, with the lawyers often accusing each other of failing to sufficiently support the president's efforts. Flynn and Powell both said they needed the Trump administration to do more to support their efforts to reverse President-elect Joe Biden's win. Giuliani and Powell also turned their ire on each other. The source said National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, a successor to Flynn, participated by phone.
Powell was briefly a formal adviser to Trump's campaign in the aftermath of the election but was cut from the official team early in the legal push. Powell, Giuliani and Meadows did not respond to requests for comment.
Appointing a special counsel through the Justice Department under current regulations would require the concurrence of the attorney general. Amid some tension with Trump over election-related issues, Attorney General William Barr has announced plans to step down effective Wednesday. After that, the task would fall to Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.
In an interview last week, Rosen declined to say whether he had plans to name any special counsels during the waning days of the administration, but he portrayed a business-as-usual atmosphere that seems at odds with him taking such a dramatic move.
A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether any department personnel were involved in the Friday talks at the White House.
Trump could name Powell or someone else as a special counsel without Justice Department buy-in, but that person would lack the powerful tools federal prosecutors have to demand evidence and compel testimony through grand juries and other legal mechanisms available only to formally appointed Justice Department attorneys.
Senior U.S. Army officials said Friday, in response to Flynn's recent calls, that the military would have "no role" in determining the outcome of the U.S. election.
Whoa-- wait a minute!
Wasn't Trump supposed to be The Law and Order Candidate?
The Lincoln Project explains:
At best, Trump is the Lawn Odor candidate.
Trump being a law and order president is like saying Dahmner was a vegan.
Maybe if he decides to run again in 2024 (assuming he's not still in prison), he might want to pick her as his Vice-presidential candidate. it would seem to be appropriate.
I'm thinking Trump/Palin 2024. How does it get better than that?
I'm sure Xx would be thrilled.
Trump would think that she is grabable.
Who knows if any of these anonymous reports about the meeting are true, but crazy, and illegal suggestions in white house meetings aren't rare. Listening to them is. I was just reading the other day in a Kennedy bio about how John McCone suggested they stage an attack on Americans they could blame on Castro to justify an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy didn't listen to him then, but he did he listen to his brother when he suggested deporting and paying off a young East German woman suspected of being a spy who JFK was having naked swimming parties with in the White House pool.
Since Trump let it pass and did not immediately put down the suggestion that martial law be used in an attempt to overturn the election, I'm with John Bolton on this:
"The 25 th Amendment should be discussed to ensure that this President doesn’t ruin this republic and impose a dictatorial rule over our country."
.
.
He thinks he can use active duty troops (not NG or Reserves) to enforce it. He would be in violation of the Posse Comitus Act. Then again, Mr Law And Order has never cared about following the law anyway.