The document that emerged during the congressional investigation into the Capitol riot was a never-issued executive order drafted in the final weeks of the Trump Administration that would have ordered the Department of Defense to seize voting machines.
President Donald Trump presides over a meeting with members of Congress at the White House.
The images are from the same company.
The secretary of defense was told to collect, retain and analyze voting machines by the end of 2020 in a three-page executive order that was published Friday.
The document doesn't offer any clues as to who drafted it or whether Trump or his aides considered acting on it.
The document supports the idea by citing a number of voter fraud theories, including the false claim that voting machines are controlled by foreign entities.
The New York Times reported at the time that the order would have appointed a special counsel.
Forbes reached out to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack, Trump's post-presidency office and the former president's attorney for comment.
The executive order was part of a trove of Trump Administration documents that the former president's attorneys unsuccessfully tried to stop a House committee from accessing. The committee subpoenaed a range of Trump-era White House records from the leadup to the Capitol riot, but Trump sued the committee and argued the documents were protected by "executive privilege," a legal doctrine that gives presidents the power to keep certain communications secret. The Supreme Court didn't stop lawmakers from receiving the documents on Wednesday, and many materials began to reach the committee by Friday.
The idea of seizing voting machines was floated by several of Trump's allies. The two outlets reported that Rudy Giuliani asked if the Department of Homeland Security could take custody of voting machines, and that Powell encouraged Trump to declare a national emergency to seize the machines. The proposal came after weeks of desperate attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss. The former president tried to get the federal government to help him reverse the result of the election, but it was not easy. William Barr, who was the Attorney General at the time, stated publicly that he had seen no evidence of voter fraud that would overturn the result of the election in Georgia.
The never-issued Trump order would have seized voting machines.
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