US Elections: Donald Trump Suggests Sidney Powell As Special Counsel To Investigate Fraud

US President Donald Trump appointed attorney Sidney Powell, who was ousted from his campaign legal team after pushing unfounded conspiracy theories, as a special counsel investigating allegations of voter fraud.

Last month, Trump’s legal team effectively dismissed Powell in a statement that said she was “not a member of the legal team” and was instead “practicing law on her own.” Powell had previously appeared at various press conferences with the rest of Trump’s legal team and Trump himself previously cited Powell as the leader of the “legal effort.”

Trump proposed appointing a special counsel for Powell during a meeting Friday at the White House, which went on to discuss obtaining Powell’s security clearance, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

It is unclear whether Trump intends to go ahead with the effort. Under federal law, the attorney general of the United States, not the president, is responsible for appointing special advisers.

And numerous Republicans, from outgoing Attorney General William Barr to governors and state election officials, have said time and again that there is no evidence of the kind of massive voter fraud Trump has alleged since losing the Nov.3 election to the Democrat. Joe Biden.

The fact that Trump is even considering the idea of ​​installing Powell underscores the increasingly desperate steps he has been weighing as he tries to reverse the election results and stay in power. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and White House attorney Pat Cipollone, voiced their objections to the proposal.

Powell’s role on the president’s legal team ended after she made a series of outlandish claims of electoral fraud, including the claim that the electoral software was created in Venezuela “under the direction of Hugo Chávez,” the Venezuelan president who died in 2013.

In interviews and appearances, Powell continued to make misleading statements about the voting process, deployed unsubstantiated and complex conspiracy theories involving communist regimes, and vowed to “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” court appearance.

Trump has increasingly entertained conspiracy theories and outlandish ways to stay in office, prompted by allies like former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.

In fact, at the meeting, Giuliani lobbied Trump to take over the voting machines, which the Department of Homeland Security made clear it had no authority to do. It is also unclear what that would accomplish, given that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have investigated the issue. Paper ballots are also withheld under federal law.

Flynn, whom Trump recently pardoned for lying to the FBI, went even further in discussing the idea of ​​imposing martial law and using the military to rerun the election.

“Within the oscillating states, if I wanted, [Trump] it could take military capabilities, and it could place them in states and basically re-run an election in each of those states, “Flynn said.

Bill Banks, a Syracuse University professor who specializes in constitutional and national security law, dismissed Flynn’s proposal as “absurd.”

“Aside from the fact that state and now federal investigators have found no evidence of voter fraud that would change the outcome of the elections, martial law has no place in America without a total collapse of the mechanisms of civil government,” said Banks to the Military Times.

Since parting ways with the campaign, Powell has continued to file litigation on Trump’s behalf, partnering with conservative attorney L Lin Wood in Georgia.

Powell and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.