Lawyer urged Trump to overturn election loss using 'martial law': Memo

WASHINGTON • A lawyer pushing the baseless claim of massive fraud in the 2020 election urged former US president Donald Trump to overturn his loss through steps that would be viewed as "martial law", according to a memo published by the New York Times.

The measures that lawyer William Olson proposed Mr Trump take included replacing the acting attorney-general if he refused to contest the vote in the US Supreme Court and naming a new White House counsel to identify powers that Mr Trump could use "to ensure a fair election count", the memo showed.

Mr Olson appeared to suggest those powers included ordering "sampling from lists of registered voters", the memo showed.

"Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do," he wrote to Mr Trump in the memo dated Dec 28, 2020. "The media will call this martial law, but... that is 'fake news' - a concept with which you are well familiar."

The memo obtained by the Times revealed for the first time Mr Olson's role in efforts by right-wing actors outside the White House to convince Mr Trump to overturn the win of his Democratic foe Joe Biden that were opposed by Justice Department leaders and White House lawyers.

Mr Olson, whose office is located in a Virginia suburb of Washington, joined the legal team of one of those outside actors, Mr Mike Lindell, the chief executive officer of MyPillow, after Mr Trump left office.

The Times also reported that a person familiar with the work of the congressional committee investigating the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol said the panel was aware of Mr Olson's memo and was exploring his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 vote.

Mr Olson sent his memo 10 days after a six-hour heated White House meeting in which, according to testimony by the Jan 6 committee, top aides vied to influence Mr Trump against Mr Lindell, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and lawyer Sidney Powell as they peddled conspiracy theories about the election.

Even though Mr Trump's aides persuaded him during the meeting to reject a recommendation to order the seizure of voting machines and other measures, Mr Olson's memo indicated that the former president remained receptive to extreme proposals aimed at keeping him in office.

"While time to act was short when we spoke on Christmas Day," Mr Olson wrote to Mr Trump, "time is about to run out."

REUTERS