Two White House sources told the New York Times that President Donald Trump convened a heated meeting in the Oval Office on Friday that included talks of imposing Martial Law in order to prevent a Joe Biden presidency as Trump advisers clash.
The sources said the meeting including lawyer Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The sources described a session that began as an impromptu gathering but devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points as some of Trump’s aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn’s more outrageous suggestions about overturning the election.
Flynn had suggested earlier this week that Trump could invoke martial law as part of his efforts to overturn the election that he lost to President-elect Joe Biden — an idea that arose again during the meeting in the Oval Office, one of the people said. It wasn’t clear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room forcefully pushed back and shot it down, according to The Times.
At one point, the meeting got “ugly” as Powell and Flynn accused others of abandoning the President as he works to overturn the results of the election, one person told the newspaper.
“It was heated — people were really fighting it out in the Oval, really forceful about it,” one of the sources said.
One of the sources described an escalating sense of concern among Trump’s aides, even those who have weathered his previous controversies, about what steps he might take next as his term comes to an end.
White House aides who participated in the meeting, including White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and counsel Pat Cipollone, also pushed back intensely on the suggestion of naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud allegations Trump’s own administration has dismissed.