In a midnight meeting in the Oval Office on December 2020, a White House lawyer said he was “crazy,” and an executive aide said he was “crazy.”
Then-President Donald Trump held talks with three outside advisers that evening, presenting him with implausible plans to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.
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On January 6, 2021, Mr. A House committee investigating an attack on the Capitol led by supporters of Trump has revealed new evidence in what lawmaker Jamie Raskin called ‘the strangest meeting of the Trump presidency’.
AFP
In addition to the President, participants in this December 18, 2020 session included Sidney Powell, an ardent supporter of conspiracy theories, Michael Flynn, former National Security Adviser, and Patrick Byrne, former boss of Overstock.com online sales. site.
According to the commission, they Mr. Trump to sign, secretary of defense to seize voting machines, special counsel to investigate election Ms. They also came up with a draft executive order appointing Powell.
White House legal officials were alerted to their presence once a staffer let the three officials into the White House.
Mrs. According to Powell, they were able to spend 10 to 15 minutes alone with the president before White House legal counsel Pat Cipollone rushed to the Oval Office, setting a new “land speed record.”
“I don’t understand how they got in,” said Mr. Cipollone told the commission. “I’m not happy with the people in the Oval Office.”
“I don’t think they are giving good advice to the president,” he added.
Mr Cipollone said he was ‘absolutely opposed’ to appointing Ms Powell as a special prosecutor and that seizing voting machines was a ‘terrible idea’.
Mr. According to Rusk, Mr. A “heated, name-calling confrontation” between Cipollone, other White House staffers and outside advisers continued for more than six hours.
AFP
Pat Cipollone
Former New York mayor and Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani joined the group at one point. He had been falsely claiming for weeks that the election had been rigged.
“This was not a normal meeting,” said Derek Lyons, one of the White House officials at the time. “People were yelling at each other and yelling at each other.”
Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said she heard the commotion and texted a colleague that the situation was “crazy.”
Mr Cipollone said outside advisers were “verbally attacking” him and accused him of failing to show loyalty to Mr Trump by investigating allegations of voter fraud.
“We asked a simple question: ‘Where is the evidence?’,” he explained.
Eric Hershman, another White House legal adviser who was present, said Mr Flynn once tried to demonstrate election fraud with graphics showing “internet-connected Nest thermostats”.
“We got to the point where we could hear screams everywhere,” Hershman said. “It is late at night. It’s been so long and what they gave seemed crazy to me.
Regarding election results Mr. Mr. Trump also pointed out that all of Trump’s legal challenges have been rejected by the courts. Hershman said. To which Ms Powell replied: ‘Well, judges are corrupt’.
“And I said ‘all judges’?” Mr. Hershman said. “Is the least of them corrupt? Even those we named?”
According to him, Mr Flynn, a retired general, shouted at him that he was a ‘quitter’.
The meeting ended after midnight and it was back to square one, Mr. Lyons said.
That is, they were looking for ways that Sidney Powell was “beating, Mike Flynn was beating — that would make President Trump pursue a second term.”
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