Politics - News Analysis

NYT Bombshell: Trump Was More Personally Involved in Seizing Voting Machines than Thought

According to a Monday evening NYT bombshell report (Updated this Tuesday morning), Trump himself was more personally involved than previously thought in the attempt to seize voting machines throughout the country. Indeed, it “sounds” as though it became near an obsession.

The article specifically notes that members of the team around Trump, including Michael Flynn and Sydney Powell, strongly encouraged Trump to order the military to seize the voting machines. (The New York Times is getting a lot of criticism for stating that they were looking for evidence of fraud. They knew there had been no fraud, they were simply trying to overturn the election). It was Rudy Giuliani, of all people, who insisted that they could not or should not involve the military.

Rudy said that they should call Homeland Security and have them round up the voting machines. Trump authorized Rudy to make the call, only to be told that Homeland Security didn’t have the authority to seize voting machines. This, of course, is true under any circumstances, but would also have been true if Rudy Giuliani asked Homeland Security to order a pizza. There is a chain of command for a reason and if Trump wanted something done, he should have made the call himself and signed a presidential order, which often includes findings justifying the order, including the legal authority to make the order. Homeland Security knew it had no legal authority and none was provided with the order. (Obviously)

As laid out by the Times:

Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Giuliani to make that inquiry after rejecting a separate effort by his outside advisers to have the Pentagon take control of the machines. And the outreach to the Department of Homeland Security came not long after Mr. Trump, in an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr, raised the possibility of whether the Justice Department could seize the machines, a previously undisclosed suggestion that Mr. Barr immediately shot down.

The new accounts show that Mr. Trump was more directly involved than previously known in exploring proposals to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines as he grasped unsuccessfully for evidence of fraud that would help him reverse his defeat in the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the episodes.

And perhaps that is why we are seeing Trump panicking so much lately. The truth really is starting to come out. Bill Barr testified to the committee on at least two occasions, and we now know that Marc Short, Pence’s Chief of Staff, testified last week. It is not a coincidence that tidbits like this are hitting the New York Times as these people testify.

It is likely – though we cannot prove and are speculating – that members of the Committee are passing along select information as the investigation presses on, both to encourage others to come forward and to alert those who will testify that the committee already knows a great deal and there is no point at all in attempting to evade or lie to them.

Regardless, we can expect more Trump statements in the near future, indeed likely today.

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[email protected] with Nicole Hickman

meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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