Lawyer Who Helped Trump Try To Overturn Election Says He May Use ‘Emergency Powers’ To Take Control of Elections

A lawyer who helped President Donald Trump try to overturn the 2020 election claimed the president can “exercise some emergency powers” to wield authority over elections, which are a state matter.

After the 2020 election, Cleta Mitchell, then a partner at Foley & Lardner, participated in the infamous phone call in which Trump tried to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, which was one more than Trump’s margin of defeat in the state. Raffensperger denied Trump’s baseless claims of fraud. Mitchell later alleged that Raffensperger was “simply not correct.”

After the call became public, Mitchell resigned from Foley & Lardner.

Last week, she appeared on Washington Watch, where she vaguely claimed that Trump could invoke emergency powers to take control of elections.

“The president’s authority is limited,” Mitchell said. “The chief executive is limited in his role with regard to elections, except that where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States, as I think that we can establish with the porous system that we have, then I think maybe the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward.”

Trump has falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from him. In the two months following the contest, he attempted to pressure Republican officials in states he lost to overturn their results. Three days after his January 2021 call to Raffensperger became public, the president held a rally in Washington, D.C., where he encouraged a mob of his supporters to march to the Capitol, where shortly thereafter, a deadly riot ensued as Trump reportedly watched it on television and ignored lawmakers’ pleas for help.

Watch above via Washington Watch.