Draft Trump order suggested seizing voting machines based on Antrim irregularities

A draft presidential order written while President Donald Trump was still in office suggested using a conspiracy theory involving voting irregularities in Antrim County in the 2020 election to justify the Defense Department seizing voting machines.

The order, which was never issued and was part of a group of documents Trump and administration officials had tried to shield from a U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was first reported on Friday by Politico, which obtained and released a copy of it.

As Politico noted, it wasn't clear who wrote the order and how seriously, if at all, it was ever considered by the Trump administration. It also wasn't clear what machines might be seized, though it references events in Michigan and in Georgia, another state where Trump and his allies disputed the result.

Meanwhile, the order referenced widely debunked concerns about voting machines in Antrim and elsewhere as justification for the Defense Department to seize and analyze voting machines, an unheard of step in U.S. history.

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It also called for that analysis to be turned over to federal intelligence officials and a special counsel to be appointed to consider criminal charges. The draft order was dated Dec. 16, 2020, as Trump and his supporters continued to advance baseless claims of voting machine irregularities and fraud that cost him the election to President Joe Biden in several key swing states, including Michigan. A mob attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress met to certify the results showing Biden as the winner.

The House committee is looking into "the facts, circumstances and causes" of that attack.

The second paragraph of the draft order begins, "I, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, find that the forensic report of the Antrim County, Michigan voting machines, released December 13, 2020, and other evidence submitted to me in support of this order, provide probable cause sufficient to require action... because of evidence of international and foreign interference in the November 3, 2020, election."

The order went on to make allegations of vulnerabilities in the Dominion Voting System machines used by Antrim County and many other jurisdictions that they somehow allowed votes to be changed. Those claims have been debunked, as have claims that the company was controlled by foreign enemies of the U.S.

Antrim County became a center of the controversy after it initially reported unofficial results showing Biden winning the staunchly Republican county. But officials there quickly determined that changes in the ballot made in some precincts, but not all, led to the initial misreading and it was caught and fixed, showing Trump as the winner.

An outside consultant's report, cited in the draft executive order, tried to make the case that the voting system used in Antrim was "intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results." A hand tally of the county's results showed a net gain of just 12 votes for Trump, a far from unusual change following a hand count.

Attorney General William Barr, it has been reported, told Trump personally there was no widespread fraud in the election. And on the day the draft order was written, Dec. 16, Chris Krebs, the former chief of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, called the report cited in the order "factually inaccurate," as the Free Press reported at the time.

"I'm seeing these reports that are factually inaccurate continue to be promoted," Krebs told a Senate committee. "We have to stop this. It's undermining confidence in democracy."

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Draft order suggested seizing voting machines based on Antrim issues