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Executive Order Reportedly Drafted For Trump To Seize Voting Machines

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This article is more than 2 years old.
Updated Jan 24, 2022, 10:44am EST

Topline

A never-issued executive order drafted in the final weeks of the Trump Administration would have tasked the Department of Defense with seizing voting machines, Politico revealed Friday, a document that emerged during a congressional investigation into the Capitol riot — casting new light on some Trump allies’ desperate attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Key Facts

The three-page executive order — prepared in mid-December 2020 and published Friday by Politico — instructs the secretary of defense to “seize, collect, retain and analyze” an unspecified number of voting machines and prepare a report within 60 days, a deadline that fell weeks after the end of former President Donald Trump’s term.

Trump’s signature doesn’t appear on the order, and the document doesn’t offer any clues as to who drafted it — including whether it was prepared by a Trump staffer or an outside ally — or whether Trump or his aides seriously considered acting on it.

The document justifies this unprecedented idea by citing a litany of vague, unproven or thoroughly debunked voter fraud theories, including the false claim that many U.S. voting machines are controlled by foreign entities and designed to rig elections.

The order also would’ve appointed a special counsel, a job Trump considered awarding to controversial attorney Sidney Powell, the New York Times reported at the time.

Forbes has reached out to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack, Trump’s post-presidency office and the former president’s attorney for comment.

Tangent

The executive order was part of a trove of Trump Administration documents that the former president’s attorneys unsuccessfully tried to stop a House committee investigating the Capitol attack from accessing, Politico reported. Last year, the committee subpoenaed a range of Trump-era White House records from the leadup to the Capitol riot, but Trump sued the committee and argued the documents were protected by “executive privilege,” a legal doctrine that gives presidents the power to keep certain communications secret. The Supreme Court declined to stop lawmakers from receiving the documents Wednesday, effectively ending Trump’s legal battle, and many materials reportedly began to reach the committee by Friday.

Key Background

Several Trump allies floated the idea of seizing voting machines during December 2020 meetings with White House staff, according to Axios and the Times. Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani asked whether the Department of Homeland Security could take custody of voting machines, and Powell encouraged Trump to declare a national emergency to seize the machines, ideas that were ultimately quashed by White House aides like chief of staff Mark Meadows, the two outlets reported. This unusual proposal came after weeks of doomed and increasingly desperate attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss. The former president pushed federal courts, state legislatures and Congress to help him reverse the election’s outcome, but he struggled to get the federal government’s muscle behind the effort. Former Attorney General William Barr defied Trump and stated publicly that he’d seen no evidence of voter fraud on a grand enough scale to reverse the election’s outcome, and a behind-the-scenes push to use the Department of Justice to overrule Trump’s loss in Georgia was reportedly abandoned after senior DOJ staffers threatened to resign.

Further Reading

Read the never-issued Trump order that would have seized voting machines (Politico)

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