DONALD Trump has rejected claims that he asked his top team about declaring martial law to overturn his loss in the presidential election.
Disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn – who pled guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017 – had reportedly pushed for the president to use the military to “rerun” the election.
Today, Donald Trump rejected suggestions that martial law would be used.
He tweeted: “Martial law = Fake News. Just more knowingly bad reporting.”
It was reported that during a meeting on Friday, Trump has asked about Flynn’s proposal of using the military and quickly received pushback.
Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, told Trump there was no constitutional authority for topics discussed during the meeting, a source told The New York Times.
Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, was also said to have aggressively pushed back on martial law and other ideas proposed in a bid to overturn election results, according to The New York Times.
Trump and his advisors are also reported to have discussed commandeering voting machines and appointing Sidney Powell as a special counsel to inspect them.
Powell, a lawyer for Trump’s reelection campaign, has made wild conspiracy theories claiming that Venezuelans are trying to rig voting machines, The New York times reported.
The lawyer attended the Friday meeting with Flynn, who was recently pardoned by Trump, outlets reported. Powell had represented Flynn in his fight against criminal charges.
Jim Golby, a senior fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas-Austin, told Task & Purpose that Flynn’s conspiracy theories “is a disgrace.”
“The fact that Mike Flynn continues to spread conspiracy theories and misrepresent the president’s legal authorities is a disgrace to the country and to the uniform he wore,”Mr Golby told the outlet.
Senior Trump officials told Axios that the president has been “flirting with blatant abuses of power” causing officials to become worried.
One official said “it’s impossible not to start getting anxious about how this ends” when the president “spends his time talking to conspiracy nuts who openly say declaring martial law is no big deal.”
Senior US Army officials have said that the military would have “no role” in determining election results, Politico reports.
President-elect Joe Biden defeated Trump in the election by more than 7 million votes.
Trump has routinely rampaged against the results of the election and claimed without evidence that he lost due to election fraud.
Officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of voter fraud that would alter the outcome of November’s contest.
