Donald Trump brainstorming with conspiracy theorist on new ways to overturn election

Samantha Dick
Dec 20, 2020, updated Dec 21, 2020

In the eyes of American lawyer Sidney Powell, Donald Trump lost the US election because of a secret evil plot involving communists and global figures.

On Friday night (local time), she met him in the Oval Office.

The pair was joined by White House staffers, attorneys and disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn as they brainstormed ways to overturn the US election results.

Sidney Powell. Photo: Getty

It came as Democrats leader Joe Biden continued ticking off an extensive to-do list before his inauguration on January 20.

Though still early days, Mr Biden’s cabinet offers a preview of his pragmatic and largely centrist approach to leadership, focusing on working-class Americans, climate change action and racial issues.

His economic and environment teams are slightly left of centre, while his foreign policy picks and White House aides are mainstream Democratic Party choices.

Though highly experienced, Mr Biden’s cabinet nominee picks have frustrated some progressives who fear the new administration will be stuck in old thinking and therefore be unprepared to tackle a post-Trump world.

A return to the status quo won’t be enough, they told The New York Times.

“One of the concerns is that you want to pierce the bubble of how our Democratic elites have thought about politics and policymaking and urge them to go bolder,” said Faiz Shakir, manager of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign.

“And now we’re relying on a lot of people’s instincts who’ve been honed, quite frankly, during a different era of politics.”

Since Mr Biden was elected in November, Ms Powell has filed several outlandish lawsuits that have all failed in an attempt to show the election was rigged.

Sidney Powell is back in the Oval Office after being fired for promoting misinformation. Photo: Getty

Recently, she took her wacky claims a step too far – even for the Trump campaign.

Just last month, Ms Powell was deliberately cut from its legal team after she falsely claimed electronic voting systems had switched millions of ballots in favour of Mr Biden using “communist money”.

“Sidney Powell is practising law on her own,” Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a statement on November 22.

“She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”

Her swift return to the Oval Office shows her exile did not last long.

Like Ms Powell, Mr Flynn – who was recently pardoned by Mr Trump for lying to the FBI over Russian interference – has also been pushing the President to do whatever it takes to seize a second term.

Michael Flynn is the second associate of Donald Trump convicted in the Russia probe to be granted clemency. Photo: AP

That includes declaring martial law and ordering the military to oversee new elections in the battleground states that Mr Trump lost.

At one point in the meeting on Friday, the President asked about that idea.

He also invited Ms Powell to consider becoming appointed a special counsel, where she would be granted high-level security clearances to investigate the 2020 election.

But before she could accept, Mr Trump abandoned the offer after White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and other Trump attorneys talked him out of it.

Mr Giuliani, who joined the meeting by phone, also opposed the idea.

An angry Ms Powell reportedly floated the idea of issuing an executive order to seize and examine voting machines across the country – something Mr Giuliani suggested last week.

Again, Mr Meadows and Mr Cipollone shut it down.

According to American outlet ABC News, Ms Powell screamed and accused other Trump aides of being “quitters” for giving up the fight.

But it’s clear Mr Trump isn’t giving up the fight any time soon.