Trump Sought Means Of Seizing Voting Machines In Wake Of His 2020 Election Defeat

Jan. 6 Panel Examining Trump’s Role in Proposals to Seize Voting Machines

 

The House committee is looking into efforts by the former president’s outside advisers to create a legal basis for national security agencies to help reverse his defeat in 2020.

 

By Luke Broadwater, Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer and Michael S. Schmidt

Feb. 1, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/us/jan-6-panel-trump-voting-machines.html

 

WASHINGTON — The House Jan. 6 committee is scrutinizing former President Donald J. Trump’s involvement in proposals to seize voting machines after the 2020 election, including efforts to create a legal basis for directing national security agencies to take such an extreme action, according to three people with knowledge of the committee’s activities.

 

It is not clear what evidence the committee is examining as it looks at any role Mr. Trump might have played in encouraging or facilitating the drafting of a so-called national security finding, a type of document more typically used as the basis for a presidential order to an intelligence agency to take covert action. But the committee recently received documents from the Trump White House including what court filings described as a “document containing presidential findings concerning the security of the 2020 election after it occurred and ordering various actions,” along with related notes.

 

A document fitting that description circulated among Mr. Trump’s formal and informal advisers in the weeks following the election. It reflected baseless assertions about foreign interference in American voting systems that had been promoted most prominently by one of his outside lawyers, Sidney Powell.

 

That document, dated Dec. 16, 2020, and titled “Presidential Findings to Preserve Collect and Analyze National Security Information Regarding the 2020 General Election,” was published last month by Politico. It used the groundless assertions about foreign interference in the vote tally to conclude that Mr. Trump had “probable cause” to direct the military to begin seizing voting machines.

 

“We certainly intend to run to ground any evidence bearing on an effort to seize voting machines and to use the apparatus of the federal government to confiscate these machines in the service of the president’s aim to overturn the election,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee. “We want to fully flesh out the facts: How close did this come to being operationalized? What kind of pushback did they receive? Who was a part of this particular scheme? We want to answer all those questions.”

 

The New York Times reported on Monday that Mr. Trump was more directly involved than previously known in exploring proposals championed by outside advisers to seize voting machines as he grasped unsuccessfully for evidence of fraud that would help him reverse his defeat in the 2020 election.

 

Those attempts included directing his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to ask the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states — Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the acting deputy secretary, said no — and raising with Attorney General William P. Barr the question of whether the Justice Department could seize the machines, a query that Mr. Barr rejected, according to people familiar with the episodes.

 

Mr. Cuccinelli, who had told Mr. Giuliani that the Homeland Security Department did not have the authority to audit or impound the machines, later encountered Mr. Trump at a meeting on another topic. Mr. Trump again raised with him, in passing, the idea of the department seizing the machines, and Mr. Cuccinelli reiterated that there was no legal authority for doing so, according to a person familiar with the exchange.

 

The outside advisers had earlier pushed a plan under which Mr. Trump would direct the Pentagon to seize the voting machines, an idea that was killed by White House officials and Mr. Giuliani.

 

“It is alarming that the former president apparently seriously contemplated extraordinary and legally not permitted courses of action to seize voting equipment from states and localities,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a member of the committee.

 

The panel for weeks has been studying the actions of Michael T. Flynn, a former national security adviser to Mr. Trump who investigators say was involved in discussions about seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency and invoking certain national security emergency powers, including during a meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 18.

 

Mr. Flynn also gave an interview to the right-wing media site Newsmax a day earlier in which he talked about the purported precedent for deploying military troops and declaring martial law to “rerun” the election.

 

At the Dec. 18 meeting, Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com who funded many of the efforts to challenge the election, said he, Mr. Flynn and Ms. Powell decided they would get into the White House without an appointment “by hook or by crook” to present their plans to Mr. Trump. He said a junior staffer let them in the building, and eventually they got close enough to the Oval Office that Mr. Trump saw them and called them in.

 

Once inside, the group pitched Mr. Trump on their plans for him to sign an executive order for the National Guard to take control of voting machines and for Ms. Powell to be appointed a special counsel overseeing election integrity.

 

“We pointed out that, it being Dec. 18, if he signed the paperwork we had brought with us, we could have the first stage (recounting the Problematic 6 counties) finished before Christmas,” Mr. Byrne wrote of the episode in a book, referring to portions of contested swing states that Mr. Trump had lost.

 

Mr. Byrne wrote that Mr. Flynn had drafted a “beautiful operational plan” that just needed “one signature from the president.” He described various versions of the plan, including an option for the U.S. Marshals to intervene and another for Mr. Trump to “have the National Guard rerun the elections in those six states.”

 

He described White House lawyers and officials as fighting the plans in the meeting, including the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, who thundered, “He does not have the authority to do this!”

 

Representative Jaime Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the Jan. 6 committee, said the panel is trying to understand the “whole picture” of the plan to seize voting machines and how it relates to other efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power, such as the former president’s pressure campaign on Congress and former Vice President Mike Pence to reject electors from states won by President Biden.

 

“His overriding objective was to overturn the election. He said that as recently as this weekend,” Mr. Raskin said of Mr. Trump. “He set into motion a range of tactical ploys to accomplish his goal.”

 

Mr. Raskin added: “It’s hard to imagine a more outrageous federal assault on voting rights than a presidential seizure of voting machines without any action by Congress at all and no basis in law. That is the stuff of dictators and banana republics.”

 

The extraordinary plan to mobilize the country’s national security agencies to take control of voting machines required an equally extraordinary first step. Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel who was an ally of Mr. Flynn and Ms. Powell, revealed in a podcast interview last year that the gambit initially hinged on a report about foreign interference in the election that John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence at the time, was bound by congressional mandate to present to lawmakers by Dec. 18, 2020.

 

The House investigation. A select committee is scrutinizing the causes of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which occurred as Congress met to formalize Joe Biden’s election victory amid various efforts to overturn the results. Here are some key figures in the inquiry:

 

Donald Trump. The former president’s White House records concerning the attack, which Mr. Trump unsuccessfully attempted to keep from the committee by claiming executive privilege, have been a focus of the inquiry. The panel is also scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s role in proposals to seize voting machines after the 2020 election.

 

Ivanka Trump. The daughter of the former president, who served as one of his senior advisers, has been asked to cooperate after the panel said it had gathered evidence that she had implored her father to call off the violence as his supporters stormed the Capitol.

 

Kevin McCarthy. The panel has requested an interview with the House Republican leader about his contact with Mr. Trump during the riot. The California representative, who could become speaker of the House after the midterms in November, has refused to cooperate.

 

Mark Meadows. Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, who initially provided the panel with a trove of documents that showed the extent of his role in the efforts to overturn the election, is now refusing to cooperate. The House voted to recommend holding Mr. Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress.

 

Rudolph Giuliani. The panel has subpoenaed Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and three members of the legal team — Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Boris Epshteyn — who pursued conspiracy-filled lawsuits that made claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

 

Mike Pence. The former vice president could be a key witness as the committee focuses on Mr. Trump’s responsibility for the riot and considers criminal referrals, but Mr. Pence reportedly has not decided whether to cooperate.

 

Marc Short. Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, who has firsthand knowledge of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign on the vice president to throw out the election results, testified before the panel under subpoena. He is the most senior person around Mr. Pence who is known to have cooperated.

 

Scott Perry and Jim Jordan. The Republican representatives of Pennsylvania and Ohio are among a group of G.O.P. congressmen who were deeply involved in efforts to overturn the election. Both Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan have refused to cooperate with the panel.

 

Fox News anchors. ​​Texts between Sean Hannity and Trump officials in the days surrounding the riot illustrate the host’s unusually elevated role as an outside adviser. Mr. Hannity, along with Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade, also texted Mr. Meadows as the riot unfolded.

 

Big Tech firms. The panel has criticized Alphabet, Meta, Reddit and Twitter for allowing extremism to spread on their platforms and saying they have failed to cooperate adequately with the inquiry. The committee has issued subpoenas to all four companies.

 

Fake Trump electors. The panel has issued subpoenas to 14 people who were part of bogus slates of electors for Mr. Trump in seven states won by President Biden: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

 

Far-right figures. White nationalist leaders and militia groups are being scrutinized as the panel’s focus intensifies on the rallies that led up to the mob violence and how those with extremist views worked with pro-Trump forces to undermine the election.

 

Roger Stone and Alex Jones. The panel’s interest in the political operative and the conspiracy theorist indicate that investigators are intent on learning the details of the planning and financing of rallies that drew Mr. Trump’s supporters to Washington based on his lies of a stolen election.

 

Steve Bannon. The former Trump aide has been charged with contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena, claiming protection under executive privilege even though he was an outside adviser. His trial is scheduled for this summer.

 

Michael Flynn. Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser attended an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18 in which participants discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers. Mr. Flynn has filed a lawsuit to block the panel’s subpoenas.

 

Phil Waldron. The retired Army colonel has been under scrutiny since a 38-page PowerPoint document he circulated on Capitol Hill was turned over to the panel by Mr. Meadows. The document contained extreme plans to overturn the election.

 

Jeffrey Clark. The little-known Justice Department official repeatedly pushed his colleagues to help Mr. Trump undo his loss. The panel has recommended that Mr. Clark be held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate.

 

John Eastman. The lawyer has been the subject of intense scrutiny since writing a memo that laid out how Mr. Trump could stay in power. Mr. Eastman was present at a meeting of Trump allies at the Willard Hotel that has become a prime focus of the panel.

 

If Mr. Ratcliffe had pointed a finger at China, accusing Communist Party officials of manipulating votes in the United States, Mr. Waldron said in the interview, Mr. Trump would have been within his rights to invoke rare and extraordinary powers reserved for a president in times of national emergency. By Mr. Waldron’s account, those powers would have permitted Mr. Trump to seize voting machines and conduct an audit of them or a recount of the votes — the same basic plan that appeared in the draft executive orders that were sent to Mr. Trump.

 

But Mr. Ratcliffe and his senior aides were unaware until recently that Mr. Waldron and Mr. Flynn had plans involving the report, which was not submitted until well after the Dec. 18 deadline in part because of disputes within the intelligence community over how to characterize China’s role in seeking to influence American public opinion ahead of the election.

 

The report concluded that there had been no foreign interference in the casting, tabulation or counting of the votes. It said that several countries had engaged in operations to shape public opinion over the course of the campaign.

 

Mr. Waldron, an information warfare expert who has claimed he served with Mr. Flynn in the Defense Intelligence Agency, had a longstanding interest in China’s purported involvement in election interference.

 

In August 2020, months before a single presidential vote was cast, he developed a relationship with a Texas cybersecurity firm, Allied Security Operations, which was co-founded by two men: a technology expert named Russell J. Ramsland Jr. and a former soldier named Adam T. Kraft, whose online biography shows he also served at the Defense Intelligence Agency at the same time as Mr. Flynn.

 

In the podcast interview, Mr. Waldron maintained that Mr. Ramsland’s team at Allied Security had made a startling discovery in the summer of 2020: that the Chinese Communist Party, through software companies it controlled, had developed a way to flip votes on American tabulation machines, particularly those built by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion has adamantly denied that its machines have security flaws and has filed defamation suits against many of those who have repeated the claims, including Fox News, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell.

 

Before they were used as the basis for the draft orders sent to Mr. Trump, these allegations about Dominion were the centerpiece for four conspiracy-laced federal lawsuits that Ms. Powell filed in late November and early December 2020, seeking to overturn results of the election.

 

The suits — accompanied by affidavits from Mr. Ramsland, among others — made the baseless claim that Chinese officials, international shell companies and the financier George Soros had conspired to hack into Dominion’s machines in what Mr. Waldron once described as a “globalist/socialist” plot to steal the election.

 

Luke Broadwater covers Congress. He was the lead reporter on a series of investigative articles at The Baltimore Sun that won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award in 2020. @lukebroadwater

 

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT

 

Alan Feuer covers courts and criminal justice for the Metro desk. He has written about mobsters, jails, police misconduct, wrongful convictions, government corruption and El Chapo, the jailed chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel. He joined The Times in 1999. @alanfeuer

 

Michael S. Schmidt is a Washington correspondent covering national security and federal investigations. He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one for reporting on workplace sexual harassment and the other for coverage of President Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. @NYTMike