President Donald Trump has ratcheted up his efforts to overturn the results of the election as right-wing conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell returned to the White House.
Powell, who was ousted just days ago from Trump’s legal team, is pitching extremist ideas like seizing voting machines or even declaring martial law.
After meeting with Trump on Friday in the Oval Office along with disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Powell was back at the White House lobbying aides to join her quixotic push.
Powell and Flynn, who received a presidential pardon despite pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, are vociferously urging Trump to issue an executive order or take other action to seize voting machines in swing states won by President-elect Joe Biden.
Flynn has openly called for Trump to proclaim martial law to order a rerun of the election in some states that Trump lost.
Legal experts from across the political spectrum say either move would be clearly unconstitutional and would quickly be blocked by courts.
Trump aides, even die-hard loyalists like chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, have warned Trump not to take such extreme steps and have openly pushed back against Powell and Flynn.
Trump himself appears to be determined to continue his dead-end fight to overturn the election results even after the Electoral College voted for Biden and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell congratulated the incoming administration.
He is actively prodding lawmakers to object to the Electoral College vote when Congress convenes for a pro forma vote on Jan. 6, even though that move is doomed to failure.
Trump has lost dozens of legal challenges against the results. On Monday, the president took to Twitter to spout new unfounded claims about the results in Pennsylvania, which he lost by more than 80,000 votes.
As legal challenges fall by the wayside, Trump may seek more attention-grabbing moves to invigorate his base before he leaves office next month. But even as Trump faces certain defeat, experts say he is doing untold damage to American democracy by undermining trust in our elections.
