A White House attorney described the December 2020 meeting in the Oval Office at midnight as “crazy,” while an executive assistant said it was “preposterous.”
That night, President Donald Trump was conferring with three outside advisers who presented him with chilling plans to nullify the result of the 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden won.
The parliamentary committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol led by Trump supporters, revealed new elements about what Representative Jamie Raskin called “the craziest meeting of the Trump era.”
In addition to Trump, conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and Patrick Byrne, former head of online sales site Overstock.com, attended the meeting on December 18, 2020.
The committee said they presented Trump with a draft presidential decree allowing the Secretary of Defense to seize voting machines and appoint Powell as special attorney general to investigate the election.
As soon as a staff member allowed the three officials into the White House, White House legal officials were informed of their presence.
According to Powell, they managed to stay alone with the president for 10 to 15 minutes before White House legal counsel Pat Cipoloni rushed into the Oval Office and set a “new speed record.”
“I didn’t understand how they got in,” Cipoloni told the committee. “I wasn’t happy to see the people who were in the Oval Office…. I don’t think they were giving good advice to the president.”
Cipoloni said he “categorically rejected” Powell’s appointment as a plaintiff, especially since the seizure of voting machines was a “terrible idea.”
According to Ruskin, for more than six hours, there was a “heated, insulting argument” between Cipoloni, White House staffers and the three advisers.
Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor and personal attorney to Donald Trump, joined the group at one point. He had been claiming for weeks that the elections were marred by fraud.
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