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More than 500 days after the attack on the US Capitol, the jury is still out over how Republicans are approaching the Big Lie. A handful of GOP candidates have embraced the false claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump—and won—while others, particularly in Pennsylvania and Georgia, appear bored and effectively over it. "I think the shine has gone off a bit," is how one Republican strategist described Trump's hold on the party. Still, the bombshells over how far MAGA world could have gone in attempting to subvert democracy keep dropping—and they're worth remembering as the January 6 committee finally holds hearings this week. Here's a scoop from my colleague Dan Friedman this weekend: A business associate of Mike Lindell—the MyPillow executive promoting outlandish conspiracy theories—circulated an especially extreme proposal: a draft executive order that would have empowered armed Trump supporters to seize voting data and conduct investigations of supposed "election tampering." The proposal, obtained by Mother Jones, identified three individuals who would be granted this power. Two were associates of former national security adviser Michael Flynn: retired Army Colonel Philip Waldron and Texas businessman Russell Ramsland. Waldron and Ramsland, at the time, were working closely with Flynn and lawyer Sidney Powell to promote the unsubstantiated and loony allegation that the Chinese Communist Party, in cahoots with billionaire George Soros and an array of other actors around the globe, had rigged US voting machines to throw the presidency to Joe Biden.
Now imagine with me a world where friends of Michael Flynn were granted such extraordinary powers and the federal government was running around seizing voting machines, guns at the ready. It's unclear how seriously this proposal had been taken at the time. But remember it when the first January 6 hearing airs this Thursday. —Inae Oh |
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An associate of Mike Lindell circulated the proposal, which would have granted extraordinary powers to allies of Michael Flynn. |
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