Advisors for then-president Donald Trump drafted more than one version of executive orders in order to seize voting machines. One ordered the Department of Defense to seize voting machines, and the other ordered the Department of Homeland Security to do so.
The dual draft executive orders were part of a broader plan and effort to undermine and overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Using the federal government to gain access to voting machines in states that Trump lost in the election was the idea of retired Col. Phil Waldron, and Trump’s former national security advisor retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Both have widely spread misinformation about the election, saying that it was stolen from Trump. The two advisers floated the ideas publicly at the same time.
But revelations that there were two fully-fledged draft executive orders, completely drawn up to use different federal agencies to carry out the efforts, shows the extreme extent to which Trump and his allies wanted to weaponize Trump’s existing powers within his lame-duck status and ultimately overturn the election.
It would have been completely unprecedented for the military or federal agents seized voting equipment for any kind of political purpose.
It was previously reported that there was a draft order for the Pentagon to seize voting machines. The fact that there is a second version of this document aimed at the Department of Homeland Security to carry out the same demand is brand new information.
It has not yet been determined who specifically authored the executive orders, as neither ended up being issued. But since both Flynn and the former attorney for Trump, Sidney Powell, advocated for this idea. In a now famous meeting in the Oval Office in mid-December 2020, Trump’s advisers proposed and pushed back on various proposals, including going as far as invoking martial law, or to name Powell as the special counsel to investigate voter fraud claims. The meeting descended into screaming matches.
The House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol is now investigating the efforts to draft these executive orders, and how it began.
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