The Trump Plan to Seize Voting Machines

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2022

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

Since the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a clearer picture has emerged of the steps that President Donald J. Trump and his allies took to try to keep him in power and overturn the 2020 election. One of the biggest questions, however, has been how far was Mr. Trump willing to go in using the apparatus of the federal government to stay in power? The Times has uncovered that in the weeks after Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, Mr. Trump considered using the levers of the federal government to seize voting machines in swing states. What exactly did Mr. Trump do, and will this revelation tip the scales of the congressional effort to hold him legally accountable?

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Obaro. This is Adeline.
0:10.0	Today, the Times has uncovered Donald Trump's most brazen attempt yet to overturn the results
0:18.4	of a 2020 election. I spoke with my colleague Mike Schmidt about exactly what Trump tried
0:25.6	to do and whether it may tip the scales of a congressional effort to hold him legally accountable.
0:34.3	It's Wednesday, February 2.
0:39.4	So Mike, good to be with you again. It's good to be back. So just a start, what is the context
0:46.5	in which you and our colleagues break this story? In the year that has passed since
0:53.2	January 6th, reporters and the specially appointed January 6th congressional committee
1:01.2	have all been trying to figure out what were the tentacles, what were the attempts that Donald
1:07.4	Trump and his allies undertook to try and keep him in office, keep him in power and overturn the
1:15.9	election. A portrait of a lot of this different stuff has emerged since then.
1:26.8	The Trump team brought forth dozens and dozens of lawsuits not just in Georgia,
1:31.0	Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada. The Lawsuit and Arizona even, this time in Wisconsin,
1:35.4	has a trial suit today in New Mexico. The baseless claims made in lawsuits about voter fraud.
1:44.2	A Trump Justice Department official drafted a letter to Republican leaders in Georgia telling
1:48.0	them to look into replacing the state's Biden electors with a new slate of Trump electors.
1:54.0	A bigger ploy to create a separate set of electors for the electoral college.
2:02.6	All vice president Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify.
2:09.0	And we become president and you are the happiest people.
2:13.9	The pressure that Trump himself put on vice president Mike Pence to, essentially as the person
2:22.7	overseeing the certification of the election, pick his own president.
2:26.6	And Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our constitution and for the good
	...

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