Sources previously described the session as one that began as an impromptu meeting, but that transformed and eventually erupted into shout-out matches at certain times when some of Trump’s aides pushed Powell and Flynn back.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and member of the Jan. 6 select committee, said Tuesday that the Dec. 18 meeting was “of great importance because President Trump was able to watch closely for several hours as his attorney.” The White House and other White House attorneys destroyed the baseless allegations and the ridiculous legal arguments offered by Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn and others. “
White House aides who attended the meeting, including White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and attorney Pat Cipollone, also strongly rejected the suggestion to appoint Powell as special counsel to investigate allegations of fraud. electoral, CNN reported at the time.
“I vehemently opposed it, I didn’t think it should be nominated for anything,” Cipollone told the committee during his closed-door interview, according to a video clip from that meeting that aired Tuesday.
Flynn had suggested before the meeting that Trump could invoke martial law as part of his efforts to annul the election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden, an idea that resurfaced during the meeting in the Office. Oval, a source said earlier. CNN.
At the time, it was unclear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room pushed back forcefully and shot her down.
Another idea that emerged at the meeting was an executive order that would allow the government to access voting machines to inspect them, CNN reported.
CNN first reported that Trump’s allies drafted more than one executive order to seize voting machines.
Immediately afterwards, one person described the meeting as “ugly” as Powell and Flynn accused the others of leaving the chair while working to overturn the election results.
“It warmed up, people really fought in the Oval, very forcefully,” one source said earlier.
“I thought he was crazy”
The select committee on Tuesday revealed an unpublished testimony from six participants in the Oval Office meeting, reproducing the video of their interviews.
Among those interviewed was former White House attorney Pat Cipollone, who told the panel he was “not happy” to see people like Powell, Flynn and Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in the oval office with the former president.
“I don’t think any of these people were giving good advice to the president, so I didn’t understand how they were incorporated,” Cipollone said in his statement, according to the video played by the committee on Tuesday.
Others in the room described how the hour-long meeting erupted in outcry, as allies outside of Trump such as Flynn and Powell accused White House advisers of resigning the president after challenging their baseless claims about election fraud and strange plans to nullify results. .
Powell accused White House lawyers of showing “nothing but contempt and contempt for the president,” according to the video of his statement.
“It wasn’t a casual meeting. Sometimes there were people yelling at each other, insulting each other. It wasn’t just kind of people sitting on the couch like, chatting.” former White House adviser Derek Lyons. he told the panel, according to the video of his deposition.
“The four outsiders in the room say they have enough evidence to support the findings and others, including myself, dispute it and then there was talk of, well, now we don’t have it, but we will have it or whatever,” he said. to say. added.
White House attorney Eric Herschmann also told the committee that the meeting got to the point that “the screams were completely, completely out there.”
“It was really unprecedented … I thought it was crazy,” he said in the deposition video, acknowledging that he told Trump’s group of external allies to “shut up the ‘F’.”
This story has been updated with additional details.