At one point, it refers to the president urging Olson to contact the acting attorney general about having the Justice Department lend its credibility to Trump’s legal efforts to invalidate the election results.Ī person familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 18, lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, pushed for Trump to seize voting machines and appoint Powell special counsel to investigate wild and groundless claims of voter fraud, even as White House lawyers fought back.īut the document suggests that even after his aides had won that skirmish in the Oval Office, Trump continued to seek extreme legal advice that ran counter to the recommendations of the Justice Department and the counsel’s office.Īnd the memo indicates that Trump was acting on the outside advice. His 2020 memo was written 10 days after one of the most dramatic meetings ever held in the Trump White House, during which three of the president’s White House advisers vied - at one point almost physically - with outside actors to influence Trump. He and his firm have long represented Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group.Īccording to his website, which displays a photograph of him shaking hands with President Richard Nixon, Olson was a White House intern in 1971. Olson previously worked with Republican super political action committees and promoted a conspiracy theory that Vice President Kamala Harris is not eligible to be vice president, falsely claiming she is not a natural-born U.S. It was not immediately clear how Olson, who practices law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, arrived in Trump’s orbit. “In our long conversation earlier this week, I could hear the shameful and dismissive attitude of the lawyer from White House Counsel’s Office toward you personally - but more importantly toward the Office of the President of the United States itself,” Olson wrote to Trump. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “that is ‘fake news.’” “Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Olson wrote in his memo, obtained by The New York Times, which he marked “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. 28 memo by Olson, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order.” The plan included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, according to the Dec.
Olson later conceded that part of his plan could be regarded as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and that another aspect could invite comparisons with Watergate. The lawyer, William Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president. (Roger Kisby/The New York Times)Īround 5 in the afternoon on Christmas Day in 2020, as many Americans were celebrating with family, President Donald Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, on the phone with a little-known conservative lawyer who was encouraging his attempts to overturn the election, according to a memo the lawyer later wrote documenting the call. Former President Donald Trump speaks during an event with Joe Lombardo, Clark County sheriff and Republican candidate for Nevada governor, and republican Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt, in Las Vegas, on July 8, 2022.