‘Unhinged’: January 6 committee recounts Trump White House meeting

WASHINGTON: A White House lawyer described the late-night meeting in the Oval Office as "nuts." A presidential aide said it was "unhinged."

President Donald Trump was huddled with three outside advisers proposing outlandish schemes to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep him in power. The House panel probing the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters has unearthed stunning new details about what committee member Jamie Raskin called the "craziest meeting of the Trump presidency."

Participants in the December 18, 2020 strategy session at the White House were Trump, Sidney Powell, a campaign attorney actively pushing conspiracy theories, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com.

According to the committee, they arrived with a draft Executive Order for Trump to sign that would authorize the defense secretary to seize voting machines and for Powell to be appointed a special counsel to investigate the November election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

After Powell, Flynn and Byrne were let into the executive mansion by a junior staffer, White House lawyers were alerted to their unscheduled presence. Powell said the group were alone with the president for 10 to 15 minutes before White House counsel Pat Cipollone rushed over to the Oval Office, setting a new "land speed record."

"I didn’t understand how they had gotten in," Cipollone told the committee. "I was not happy to see the people who were in the Oval Office.

"I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice." Cipollone said he was "vehemently opposed" to Powell being named special counsel, and that seizing voting machines was a "terrible idea."

Raskin said there was a "heated and profane clash" between Cipollone, other White House staffers and the outside advisers lasting more than six hours.

The group was joined at one point by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, who had been energetically pushing discredited theories of electoral fraud for weeks.