The lawyer, William J. Olson, was pushing many extreme ideas to the president. Mr. Olson later admitted that part of his plan could be seen as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and that another aspect could draw comparisons to Watergate. The plan included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, according to Mr. Olson’s Dec. 28 memo, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order.” “Our small team of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Mr. Olson wrote in his memo, obtained by The New York Times, which he described as “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “this is ‘fake news.’ The document highlights Mr. Olson’s previously undisclosed role in advising Mr. Trump as the president increasingly turned to far-right figures outside the White House to pursue options that many of his official advisers had told him were impossible or illegal. in an attempt to cling to power. The involvement of someone like Mr Olson, who now represents conspiracy theorist and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, highlights how the system that would normally insulate a president from rogue actors operating outside official channels had collapsed within weeks of the 2020 elections. . That left Mr. Trump in direct contact with people pushing conspiracy theories or questionable legal ideas, telling him not only what he wanted to hear, but also that they — not the public servants advising him — were the only ones he could trust. . “In our lengthy conversation earlier this week, I could hear the disgraceful and dismissive attitude of the lawyer from the White House Counsel’s Office toward you personally — but more importantly toward the Office of the President of the United States itself,” Mr. Olson wrote to Mr. Trump. “This is unacceptable.” It was not immediately clear how Mr. Olson, who practices law in Washington, D.C. and Virginia, came to be in Mr. Trump’s orbit. Mr. Olson has previously worked with Republican super PACs and promoted a conspiracy theory that Vice President Kamala Harris is ineligible to run for vice president, falsely claiming she is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. He and his firm have long represented Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group. According to his website, which features a photo of him shaking hands with President Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Olson was a White House intern in 1971.
Key revelations from the January 6 hearings
His 2020 memo was written 10 days after one of the most dramatic meetings ever in the Trump White House, in which three of the president’s White House advisers competed — at one point almost physically — with outsiders to influence Mr. Trump. At that meeting, on Dec. 18, the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, pressed Mr. Trump to seize election machines and appoint Ms. Powell as special counsel to investigate wild and unsubstantiated allegations. for voter fraud. , even as White House lawyers fought back. But the document suggests that, even after his aides won that Oval Office showdown, Mr. Trump continued to seek extreme legal advice that ran counter to the recommendations of the Justice Department and the solicitor general’s office. And the memo shows that Mr. Trump acted on outside advice. At one point, he refers to the president urging Mr. Olson to contact the deputy attorney general to ask the Justice Department to lend credence to Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the election results. A person familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill said the committee knew Mr. Olson was in contact with Mr. Trump and was investigating Mr. Olson’s role in pushing the coup plans. 2020 elections. Mr. Olson did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment about the former president’s relationship with Mr. Olson. According to his memo, Mr. Olson discussed with Mr. Trump the idea of the Justice Department interceding with the Supreme Court to overturn his election loss. The court had declined to hear a case brought by Mr. Trump’s allies in Texas challenging the Pennsylvania election results, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing. Mr. Olson told Trump that he believed the Justice Department “will do nothing but continue to run out the clock.” “While the time for action was short when we spoke on Christmas Day, time is about to run out,” he wrote. It was not clear which White House counsel Mr. Olson was referring to in his memo. At the time, White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone. Patrick Philbin, his deputy; and another lawyer who didn’t work for the attorney’s office, Eric Herschmann, worked side by side to push back some of the more outlandish ideas being proposed. Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Herschmann had taken leading roles during the December 18 White House meeting to confront Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn. “My sense was that he not only gave you no choice, but that he was there to make sure you didn’t think of any,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to the unnamed White House lawyer. “But you have options.” Among those Mr. Olson mentioned to Mr. Trump about the Justice Department’s involvement was Mark Martin, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. White House officials believed at the time that Mr. Martin was brought in through Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff. Mr. Olson urged Mr. Trump to hire another lawyer, Kurt Olsen, who had worked on the Texas case. “As I emailed Molly on Saturday morning,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to Mr. Trump’s aide, “we began to act on your inquiry regarding the review of the complaint that our Texas team filed in which could be the first draft complaint filed by the United States. The attorneys I worked with took on that task and we now have a draft that we could present for your consideration and to Mr. Rosen for editing, refinement and filing.” In his memo, Mr. Olson said that during their conversations, he had told Mr. Trump that he had followed the president’s suggestion to call Mr. Rosen a few hours earlier to ask the acting attorney general to file a lawsuit against to try to block Joseph R. Biden Jr. from winning the Electoral College. Mr. Trump, based on Mr. Olson’s memo, knew that Mr. Rosen was late in making his request. The lawsuit was never filed. Mr. Rosen testified last month before the Jan. 6 committee that doing so was outside the bounds of the law. A spokesman for Mr. Rosen said he did not recall speaking with Mr. Olson, but that it was accurate that the acting attorney general was opposed to filing lawsuits over election interference. At the time of the memo, Mr. Trump had landed at Mar-a-Lago, but Mr. Olson encouraged him to return to Washington to fight the election results from his seat in the White House. Mr. Trump did so shortly after, working over the holidays to challenge the election results. “I do not believe you can do what Florida is required to do,” Mr. Olson wrote to the president. “And, it would send a message of your commitment to the project, to leave Mar-a-Lago to take over the White House. I urge you to return as soon as possible.” Mr. Olson also encouraged Mr. Trump to fire or reappoint Mr. Rosen if he did not agree to plans to use the Justice Department to challenge the election in court, although Mr. Olson acknowledged that such action would was causing negative news coverage. “This step will likely lead to thousands of stories drawing an analogy to the ‘Saturday Massacre’ in 1973 when President Nixon ordered AG Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox as the special counsel investigating Watergate,” he wrote. Mr Olson also said a new White House adviser would have to take steps to ensure a “fair election count”, although he admitted this would be seen by the media as “martial law”. After Mr. Trump’s departure, Mr. Olson joined the legal team of Mr. Liddell, who has promoted a series of conspiracy theories about the election and has been sued for defamation by a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems. Mr. Lindell, who stormed the Oval Office in the final days of his presidency hoping that Mr. Trump would still take action on the election, was adamant that Mr. Trump would return to the presidency in 2021, which it was not possible. Mr. Lindell sued the commission Jan. 6, seeking to block the commission’s subpoena to Verizon for his call logs. The lawsuit, which Mr. Olson and other lawyers filed, argued that Mr. Lindell’s communications about his objections to the 2020 election were protected speech, in part because they were linked to his religious beliefs. “Mr. Lindell has widely publicized that his 2020 election integrity activities are motivated, in part, by his strong religious beliefs,” the lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.
