Sources: Trump floats Powell as special counsel to probe alleged voter fraud
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump floated naming lawyer Sidney Powell, who was booted from his campaign’s legal team after pushing several conspiracy theories, as a special counsel investigating allegations of voter fraud as tries to overturn the Nov. 3 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
During a Friday meeting at the White House, Trump went as far as discussing getting Powell security clearance, according to two people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation.
It is unclear whether Trump intends to try to move forward with the effort to install Powell. Under federal law, the U.S. attorney general, not the president, is responsible for appointing special counsels. And numerous Republicans, from outgoing Attorney General William Barr to governors and state election officials, have said repeatedly that there is no evidence of the kind of mass voter fraud that Trump has been alleging in the weeks since he lost. The Friday meeting was first reported by The New York Times.
In addition to losing the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, Trump lost the Electoral College decisively to Biden, 306 electoral votes to 232.
Trump’s campaign and his allies have now filed roughly 50 lawsuits alleging widespread voting fraud and almost all have been dismissed or dropped. Trump has lost before judges of both political parties, including some he appointed, and some of the strongest rebukes have come from conservative Republicans. The Supreme Court has also refused to take up two cases.
Barr told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this month that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have looked into claims that voting machines “were programmed essentially to skew the election results … and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.” Paper ballots are also retained under federal law and have been used to verify results, including in Georgia, which performed two audits of the vote tally using paper-ballot backups.