Trump allies explored seizure of voting machines in election

Letters are believed to be currently in the possession of House Select committee

WASHINGTON — Supporters on the fringes of former President Donald Trump’s circle explored seeking sweeping authority after the 2020 election to enlist armed private contractors to seize and inspect voting machines and election data with the assistance of U.S. Marshals, according to a draft letter asking the president to grant them permission.

The previously undisclosed “authorizing letter” and accompanying emails were sent on Nov. 21, 2020, from a person involved in efforts to find evidence of fraud in the election that year. The documents, which were reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, are believed to be among those in the possession of the House Select Jan. 6 committee, which is scheduled to begin public hearings Thursday.

The letter appears to be one of the earliest iterations of a draft executive order presented to the then-president in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, by former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne in an effort to take control of voting machines.

The email and attached draft letter were sent to Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and cybersecurity expert Jim Penrose by Andrew Whitney, a British technology entrepreneur who made his way inside Trump’s circle in 2020 after he sought the president’s support for Oleandrin, a toxic botanical extract Whitney claimed was a miracle cure for COVID-19. Logan, who went on to conduct an audit of election results in Maricopa County, Arizona, and Penrose worked for weeks after the 2020 election with a group including Powell, Flynn and Byrne that sought access to voting machines in an attempt to find proof of election fraud.

Whitney and Penrose did not respond to requests from the L.A. Times seeking comment, and Logan declined an interview.

The Nov. 21, 2020, letter includes placeholder text at the top for an introduction conveying the document came from the president. The letter would have granted authority to three third-party companies to seize all election machines and election data at will, and given the companies and their subcontractors the authority to research, obtain and store offsite “all data and/or code regarding US election fraud, election manipulation, voter fraud, election interference, voter eligibility, and election systems wherever it resides.”

The directive also would have allowed the companies to inspect and analyze any records or equipment related to the election, as well as details about who had contact with them and when. In addition, the letter specified that the U.S. Marshals would assist the effort and the employees of private companies authorized to perform the work would be “granted the authority to be armed when conducting these investigations since most of the operations would be conducted under hostile conditions.”

Two of the three cybersecurity companies named in the letter are led by men who had been part of the weekslong efforts to find evidence of election fraud: Russell Ramsland of Dallas-based Allied Security Operations Group, who would go on to conduct an audit of the Antrim, Michigan, results that the Trump campaign cited as proof of fraud, and retired Army Col. Phil Waldron of Rising Tide LLC, who worked with the thenpresident’s attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on effortsto examine the election results.

Waldron and Ramsland did not respond to requests for comment.

The third company mentioned in the letter, Washington, D.C.based Axon Global Services LLC, has no known connection to efforts to find evidence of fraud during the 2020 election. When contacted by the L.A. Times, company owner Israel Martinez said he was unsure why his name was included in the letter.

“I was not privy to the document you mentioned nor was my name nor my company name listed with my authorization. Moreover, I would be angered by any implication that we would take a partisan view in any engagement we are asked to conduct,” Martinez said in a statement.

Two hours after the email was sent to Logan and Penrose on Nov. 21, 2020, a separate message was sent to pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood with the subject line “suggested language for ‘cover letter.’ ” The email to Wood, a central figure in the Trump campaign’s effort to promote conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in Georgia, included an attached letter with the same language that was written as if it came from an attorney rather than the president.

“I don’t deny receiving it, but I didn’t do anything with it,” Wood said in an interview with the L.A. Times. “I never reviewed or revised any memo that would have dealt with the confiscation of machines or an executive order for Donald Trump. Of that I am certain.”

The idea to obtain access to election machine data to look for fraud — through an executive order or other means — was floated several times after the election, several people involved in the effort told the L.A. Times.

But the idea didn’t go away. It is unclear who wrote the final version of the proposed executive order. But in February, Politico published emails dated Dec. 16, 2020, and Dec. 17, 2020, that indicated Flynn and Waldron were workshopping a draft of an executive order to seize voting machines and electronic voting data.

Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, said the draft outlined in the Nov. 21, 2020, letter reviewed by the L.A. Times doesn’t meet the basic standards of an executive order.

“You can’t say, ‘Because this is in an executive order I therefore have the authority in the executive order,’” Goitein said. “This appears to be sort of the fever dream of someone who either isn’t a lawyer or someone who didn’t do very well in law school.”