The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol played clips of both former Attorney General Bill Barr and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone recalling their reactions to then-President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the federal government seize voting machines.

“My recollection is the president said something like, well, we can get — some people say we can get to the bottom of this if the department seizes the machines,” Barr says of a statement Trump made during a key meeting ahead of Jan. 6. “It was a typical way of raising a point. And I said absolutely not.”

“There’s no probable cause. And I’m not going to seize any machines. And that was that,” Barr concluded.

“But this wasn’t the end of the matter. On the evening of December 18th, 2020, Sidney Powell, Gen. Michael Flynn, and others entered the White House for an unplanned meeting with the president,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) who conducted this part of the hearing.

“The meeting that would last a multiple hours and become hot-blooded and contentious,” Raskin explained as he then noted that an executive order was drafted ahead of the meeting.

“This proposed order directs the Secretary of Defense to seize voting machines, quote, effective immediately,” Raskin explained, adding:

But it goes even further than that. Under the order, President Trump would appoint a special counsel with the power to seize machines and then charge people with crimes with all resources necessary to carry out her duties. The specific plan was to name Sidney Powell as special counsel, the Trump lawyer who had spent the post-election period making outlandish claims about Venezuelan and Chinese interference in the election, among others.

Raskin then played a clip of Cipollone reacting to the order.

“There was a real question in my mind and a real concern, you know, particularly after an attorney general had reached the conclusion that there wasn’t sufficient election fraud to change the outcome of the election when other people kept suggesting that there was,” Cipollone said. “The answer is, what is it? At some point you have to put up or shut up. That was my view.”

Cipollone was then asked in his deposition to explain why seizing voting machines was a “bad idea” in broader terms.

“The federal government seized voting machines? It’s a terrible idea, that’s not how we do things in the United States,” he responded.

“There’s no legal authority to do that. And there is a way to contest elections. You know, that happens all the time. But the idea that the federal government could come in and seize election machines, you know, that that’s I don’t, I don’t understand why we even have to tell you why that’s a bad idea, that’s a terrible idea,” he concluded.

Watch the full clip above via MSNBC.

The post ‘It’s a Terrible Idea’: Trump White House Counsel Baffled He Had to Explain Why Seizing Voting Machines Was Wrong first appeared on Mediaite.

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