Trump holds meeting with lawyer Sidney Powell, who he fired for conspiracy theories, as he considers making her special counsel to investigate voter fraud
- Donald Trump invited Sidney Powell to the White House on Friday night
- The meeting was to discuss appointing her as special counsel for election fraud
- The New York Times reported that the meeting was contentious
- Powell accused those who have accepted the election result of being weak
- The Texas-based lawyer was briefly on Trump’s legal team before being dropped
- Powell’s wild conspiracy theories were too much even for Rudy Giuliani
Donald Trump on Friday held a meeting with Sidney Powell, who was unceremoniously dropped from his legal team, to consider appointing her as special counsel for election fraud, according to a report.
Powell, who was Michael Flynn’s lawyer and is known for her support of wild conspiracy theories, was briefly a member of Trump’s team, headed by Rudy Giuliani.
On Friday, as Powell was in the White House, Giuliani joined the discussion by phone.
Sidney Powell was at the White House on Friday night for a meeting with Donald Trump
Donald Trump is reportedly considering appointing Powell as a special counsel
The New York Times reported that the meeting ‘became raucous at times’.
White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, pushed back on the ideas being proposed.
Powell accused other Trump advisers of being quitters, according to the people briefed.
Trump and Giuliani have been pushing for data as evidence of widespread election fraud, despite being unable to bring any proof before a judge.
Bill Barr, the attorney general, rejected publicly the idea of widespread election fraud weeks ago. His resignation was announced this week.
Giuliani and his team have lost 59 cases, according to a tally kept by Democrat lawyer Marc Elias, and one one – a minor victory, relating to the period of time in which you can return to change an early vote in Pennsylvania, if you change your mind.
Finding themselves unable to argue fraud before a judge, and with the cross-examination of their witnesses, they have turned to holding ‘hearings’ across the country, where supporters of the president claim they have seen massive fraud being carried out.
Powell’s meeting on Friday was also called to discuss the use of Dominion voting machines – a source of much contention for the Trump team, who claim that they were rigged, with the support of Venezuela’s late president, Hugo Chavez, to switch votes from Trump to Biden.
During the White House meeting they discussed the possibility of an executive order to take control of voting machines to examine them, according to one of the people briefed, who spoke to the New York Times.
Giuliani has separately pressed the Department of Homeland Security to seize possession of voting machines as part of a push to overturn the results of the election, three people familiar with the discussion said.
Giuliani was told the department does not have the authority to do such a thing.