Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has reportedly handed
over a PowerPoint presentation to the House Select Committee looking into
the Capitol riot on 6 January, as a possibly separate leaked document
revealed how the Trump administration was attempting to overturn President
Joe Biden’s election victory.

The presentation bears the title “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference &
Options for 6 Jan”. The date on the title page is 5 January – the day
before the insurrection.

It was not immediately clear whether the PowerPoint that was reportedly
leaked online in an email exchange with the ex-chief is the same one that
Mr Meadows is said to have handed to the committee.

It echoes a series of false claims based on Donald Trump’s so-called Big
Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him through fraud. The defeated
president and his supporters had set out a series of allegations which
were subsequently discredited.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-2020-election-powerpoint-coup-b1973826.html

In fact, the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and
the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council said in a joint
statement on 12 November 2020: “The November third election was the most
secure in American history.”

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes,
changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” they added.

In reaction to the leak of the PowerPoint, California Democratic
Representative Eric Swalwell tweeted: “How boldly are Republicans trying
to overthrow the Biden government? They had a PowerPoint plan. Why were
they so bold? Because they think you and DOJ don’t care and thus they
can’t be stopped. We are in a battle for democracy. It’s on life support.”

The Director for the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia,
Larry Sabato, wrote: “I’m old-fashioned but treason seems like a serious
crime. I’m not a lawyer but the PowerPoint seems like real evidence that a
treasonous coup was planned.”

A former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, tweeted:
“Hey America — the GOP put the plan to overthrow the government in a
f***ing PowerPoint!”

In a tweet posted late on Thursday, Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar called
the document “a plan for a coup”.

“We need [to] get serious about what the consequences for that should be,”
she said.

A spokesperson for the select committee did not immediately respond to a
request for comment on the presentation from The Independent, but
committee vice-chair Liz Cheney wrote in a Twitter thread on Thursday that
the committee had “received exceptionally interesting and important
documents from a number of witnesses”, Mr Meadows included.

It’s not clear who wrote the document, but many of the actions recommended
in the presentation – which Mr Meadows reportedly intended to deliver to
members of Congress – also match up with ideas floated by other key allies
of former President Trump, including Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, in
hopes of keeping him in the White House for a second term in defiance of
the wishes of American voters.

“The Chinese systematically gained control over our election system
constituting a national security emergency,” the document states under the
heading “talking points”.

“The electronic voting machines were compromised and cannot be trusted to
provide an accurate vote count,” the presentation adds.

“To restore confidence, the ‘failsafe’ of counting paper ballots” should
be “used to determine who won the election for President, Senators, [and]
Congressional representatives,” another talking point says.

“Hand counts reported by the media are not really hand counts and easily
subverted,” the document adds.

On a slide entitled “summary of domestic voter fraud”, the presentation
submitted to the 6 January committee claims that “double voters, deceased
voters, out of state and out of county voters, non-citizen or felon
voters, fake ballot” or “ballot stuffing” and “other illegal ballots” were
used “in eight states”: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Another slide claims that “it’s been happening for a while” and includes a
CNN video from when the Democrats won the 2019 race for governor in
Kentucky.

A slide under the headline “irregularities in 2020 Election”, states that
“Donald J Trump was winning by a significant margin across all key states
Nov 3 evening”.

“Vote counting stopped in key states where Smartmatic software and either
ES&S or Dominion machines were used,” the document adds.

Voting machine manufacturers have sued pro-Trump lawyers for defamation
for their false claims that their equipment stole the election.

“When reporting resumed a massive spike occurred that favoured Joe Biden
and exceeded the counting capabilities that were on hand in many cases,”
the presentation adds.

A number of graphs then follow to show that there was a jump in the count.

One slide shows a complicated web of claims, stating that “adjudicated
ballots are totally at the whim of the operator or malicious actor”.

Another slide states that “election fraud and foreign interference”
includes “one tactic that is part of a larger strategic plan” and that
“other tactics include riots, threats, censorship, looting, etc”.

Presenting it as a “key issue”, the authors of the presentation claim that
“China has leveraged financial, non-governmental and foreign allies
including Venezuela to acquire influence and control US voting
infrastructure in at least 28 States”.

They go on to argue that this control will be “utilized as [a] part of
[an] ongoing globalist” and “socialist operation to subvert the will of
United States voters and install a China ally”.

The PowerPoint also claims that the Chinese Communist Party has “financial
control of Dominion voting machines”.

There’s no evidence to support claims that the 2020 election was subjected
to widespread fraud.

Over the course of several slides, the creators of the PowerPoint state
that the Chinese Communist Party also control “testing for Smartmatic
software operation on Dominion voting machines” and that “they embedded
anything they wanted!”

On a page of “recommendations”, the authors suggest that members of
Congress be briefed on “foreign interference” and that a “national
security emergency” be declared.

“Declare electronic voting in all states invalid,” the authors suggest.

On a slide entitled “perpetrators”, the presentation claims that “local
zealots” used “illegal ballot harvesting, illegal voter roles, counterfeit
mail-in and absentee ballots, and illegal adjudication changes”.

The voting machines shifted “votes from one candidate to another either
through an algorithm or adjudications”, the creators claim, adding that
“foreign actors” affected the vote “either through adjudications or
outright database overwrites”. These events “demonstrably occurred, but
not necessarily in a coordinated fashion,” the presentation says..

“Next step – count the paper ballots,” the next slide states. “Regardless
of the cheating and stuffing of the ballot box, by eliminating the
counterfeit mail-in and absentee ballots -> Trump almost certainly wins,”
the presentation says, adding that lower-level races would “turn to
Republican”.

By removing what they call “counterfeit” votes and counting the ballots
again “by hand”, they would “quickly and easily find out who the elected
leaders REALLY ARE and restore confidence in the outcome!” the PowerPoint
says.

So-called “foreign actors” had to “shift votes in traditionally Republican
strongholds in order to deliver a Biden win because they could jam no more
into the major cities (fraud votes)”, the presentation says.

The PowerPoint then moves on to local examples of what the authors say is
evidence of fraud and claim that if you count all paper ballots,
then-President Donald Trump would “overwhelmingly” win.

On a slide with the heading “restoring confidence in the 2020 General
Election”, the authors argue that “a full check to weed out counterfeit
paper ballots and then a count of the remaining legal ones across the
nation must be done for all races in all states” to “accurately determine
who the people of America actually elected as our leaders”.

The presentation states that the recount “must be done in full public view
(via web broadcast) where each person has the chance to do the count
themselves if they so desire. No more hiding behind barriers, distances,
secrecy, and gag orders”.

“Every legal paper ballot will have a camera pointed at it and will be
captured for a few seconds. It will be recorded and be broadcast in
real-time on the Internet,” the presentation says.

The “top-level plan” to count the votes includes the use of National Guard
troops and the US Marshals.