The National Archives has provided over 700 pages of Trump White House documents to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan 6 insurrection. Among those documents that Trump’s lawyers tried to keep under wraps is a draft executive order that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines. A copy of that order was published by Politico on Friday (see it below).
The executive order, dated Dec. 16, 2020, would have also appointed a special counsel to probe the 2020 election results. As noted by Politico, the order was never issued.
The report also stated that the draft executive order is “consistent with proposals that lawyer Sidney Powell made to the then-president. The report noted that on Dec. 18, 2020, Powell, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump administration lawyer Emily Newman, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne met with Trump in the Oval Office.”
In that meeting, “Powell urged Trump to seize voting machines and to appoint her as a special counsel to investigate the election, Axios reported.
The order empowers the defense secretary to “seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records required for retention under” a U.S. law that relates to preservation of election records. The order also cites a lawsuit filed in 2017 against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Additionally, Politico states, “the draft order would have given the defense secretary 60 days to write an assessment of the 2020 election. That suggests it could have been a gambit to keep Trump in power until at least mid-February of 2021.”
Read the draft order below from Politico.
