President Donald Trump is considering naming Sidney Powell as voter fraud special counsel. Two people familiar with the discussion said this suggestion surfaced on Friday when the president hinted at naming the attorney to be a special counsel that will oversee an investigation of voter fraud.
As a lawyer for the president's campaign team, Powell pushed conspiracy theories about a Venezuela-backed plot to rig voting machines in America. However, it remains to be seen whether or not Trump will move ahead with such a plan, considering that most of his advisers, including the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, didn't support this idea, The New York Times reported.
Powell recently gained notoriety for all the wrong reasons, including being unexpectedly removed from the president's campaign legal team. If Trump appoints her as a special counsel, he would be backing her baseless claims and giving already rejected attacks on the presidential election a fallacious platform of legitimacy.
Trump held a meeting at the White House on Dec. 18 to discuss whether he should consider appointing Powell as a special counsel to inquire into his repeatedly debunked claims of massive voter fraud in the recently concluded presidential election. The meeting was graced by current and former allies of the president, including Powell, Giuliani, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to Vox.
Trump and Flynn also considered imposing martial law to use the military to force states to give their elections back. Flynn has backed petitions for Trump to utilize powers in the Insurrection Act of 1807, which allows the president to deploy troops to suppress an armed opposition.
Powell has retweeted suggestions for the president to take advantage of these powers and establish military tribunals. Flynn discussed the prospect of declaring martial law to reverse the election during an interview with conservative cable news channel Newsmax, saying people talk about martial law as something they have never done, noting that it has been instituted 64 times.
Vox journalist Aaron Rupar tweeted a short clip of Flynn making the aforesaid statement in the interview. Trump was interested in this idea, sources told POLITICO. However, the military dismissed the idea out of hand, confirming that it would not influence US elections in any way. Trump tweeted that these reports were fake.
Furthermore, they even discussed how they could take control of compromised voting machines and examine them. Voting officials have repeatedly said that the machines did not lead to widespread errors.