Yes, January 6th was a white supremacist domestic terrorism attack, in the sense that terrorism is defined by using violence or the threat of violence to change government policy. What Donald Trump did after his loss to Joe Biden was to organize a terrorist attack on the country in order to change the outcome of the election.
Around 5 in the afternoon on Christmas Day in 2020, as many Americans were celebrating with family, President Donald J. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., 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.
The lawyer, William J. Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president that Mr. Olson later conceded could be regarded as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and could even invite comparisons with Watergate. They included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general, according to the Dec. 28 memo by Mr. Olson, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order,” describing their discussions.
“Our little band 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 marked “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “that is ‘fake news.’”
The document highlights the previously unreported role of Mr. Olson in advising Mr. Trump as the president was increasingly turning to extreme, far-right figures outside the White House to pursue options that many of his official advisers had told him were impossible or unlawful, in an effort to cling to power.
The involvement of a person like Mr. Olson, who now represents the conspiracy theorist and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, underscores how the system that would normally insulate a president from rogue actors operating outside of official channels had broken down within weeks after the 2020 election.
That left Mr. Trump in direct contact with people who promoted 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 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,” Mr. Olson wrote to Mr. Trump. “This is unacceptable.
The 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 Mr. Trump. In that meeting, the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, pushed for Mr. Trump to seize voting machines and appoint Ms. Powell special counsel to investigate wild and groundless claims of voter fraud, even as White House lawyers fought back.
But the memo suggests that, even after his aides had won that skirmish in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump continued to seek extreme legal advice that ran counter to the recommendations of the Justice Department and the counsel’s office.
And, the memo suggests, Mr. Trump was acting on the outside advice. At one point, the memo refers to the president urging Mr. Olson to contact the acting attorney general directly about having the Justice Department lend its credibility to Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to invalidate the election results.
A person familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said the committee was aware that Mr. Olson was in contact with Mr. Trump and that it was exploring his role in pushing forward plans to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Olson, who practices law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, 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 was discussing with Mr. Trump the notion that the Justice Department would intercede directly with the Supreme Court to reverse his electoral defeat.
The court had declined to hear a case that allies of Mr. Trump in Texas had brought challenging the election results in Pennsylvania, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing.
Mr. Olson told Mr. Trump that he believed the Justice Department “will do nothing except continue to run out the clock.”
“While time to act was short when we spoke on Christmas Day, time is about to run out,” he wrote.
It was unclear which White House lawyer Mr. Olson referred to in his memo. At the time, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone; Patrick Philbin, his deputy; and another lawyer who did not work for the counsel’s office, Eric Herschmann, were working in tandem to push back on some of the more outlandish ideas being recommended. Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Herschmann had taken lead roles during the Dec. 18 White House meeting in countering Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn.
“The feeling I had was that not just was he not offering you any options, but that he was there to make certain you did not consider any,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to the unnamed White House lawyer. “But you do have options.”
The electoral coup was the plan they decided on for January 6th, and that's because the other options failed: the planned Saturday Night Massacre at Main Justice, the SCOTUS takeover of the elections, the planned seizing of voting machines by Homeland Security, and apparently, now, a plan declaring martial law to lock the country down.
Folks, these guys had multiple plans to steal the damn election and keep Trump in power. It wasn't just January 6th. There's a lot Trump has to answer for.