President Trump in an early morning tweet dismissed a New York Times report that he had entertained a proposal from former national security adviser Michael Flynn to declare martial law.
“Martial law = Fake News. Just more knowingly bad reporting!” Trump tweeted Sunday.
The Times reported Saturday that Trump asked during a White House meeting that also involved Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell about a recommendation his former aide had made on the conservative Newsmax TV to “rerun” the 2020 election under military supervision.
While it was not clear if Trump endorsed the idea, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone sharply pushed back on it, according to the newspaper.
Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI. The president pardoned him in late November.
Meadows and Cipollone also reportedly shot down the idea of appointing Powell as a special counsel to investigate claims of widespread voter fraud. Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani also pushed back against this idea, according to the newspaper.
The reported meeting occurred shortly before the Trump campaign instructed staffers to preserve documents pertaining to Powell and Dominion Voting Systems, which has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories related to the election. The company has called on Powell to retract the claims, and the documentation preservation suggests officials are preparing for the possibility of legal action against Powell, the Times noted.
With just more than 30 days until President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, Axios reported that White House officials are increasingly concerned that the president has dug in on his attempts to overturn the election.
“People who are concerned and nervous aren’t the weak-kneed bureaucrats that we loathe,” a White House official told Axios. “These are people who have endured arguably more insanity and mayhem than any administration officials in history.”