Special counsel zeroing in on ‘unhinged’ Oval Office meeting when Trump hosted conspiracy theorists – report

The team led by special counsel Jack Smith has indicated their ongoing attention on an eventful meeting that occurred in the Oval Office during the closing days of the Trump administration, a report said.

In that meeting, former president Donald Trump considered a series of extraordinary proposals to maintain his hold on power.

Several sources told the CNN that investigators questioned multiple witnesses – both in front of the grand jury and during interviews – about the bizarre meeting. The investigation has been ongoing for several months, the report said.

Some witnesses have been asked about the meeting earlier, while others, including Rudy Giuliani, have faced inquiries more recently, it was reported.

Sources told CNN that Mr Giuliani willingly participated in interviews with investigators for two consecutive days last month. During these interviews, a variety of subjects were discussed, including the contentious meeting in December 2020 that Mr Giuliani attended.

Prosecutors have reportedly focused their inquiries specifically on three external advisers to Mr Trump who were involved in the meeting: former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne.

On 18 December 2020, in the last days of Mr Trump’s presidency, a group of lawyers and supporters assembled by the former president to challenge the results of the presidential election arrived at the White House. They came prepared to challenge the results of the election with their conspiracy theories and a draft executive order to seize voting machines.

According to an NPR report from July last year, representative Jamie Raskin described how Mr Powell, Mr Byrne and Mr Flynn accessed the White House “with the help of a junior staffer and spoke with Trump alone for 10-15 minutes before White House officials learned of the meeting and made their way to join”.

Mr Raskin displayed texts from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson describing the meeting to Tony Ornato, then White House deputy chief of staff for operations, claiming: “The West Wing is unhinged”.

Mr Giuliani has earlier said in his testimony that the former president told the White House attorneys that they were “not tough enough” and used crass language.

The meeting ended in shouting and insults.

According to the New York Times, Derek Lyons, a former White House staff secretary, said: “At times, there were people shouting at each other, hurling insults at each other – it wasn’t just sort of people sitting around on a couch like chit-chatting.”

Subsequently, Mr Trump took to Twitter and said that the upcoming gathering in Washington, DC – scheduled for 6 January 2021 – to voice their opposition to the election results, “will be wild”.