The origins of the draft executive order presented by the Trump cabal that would activate military units to seize voting machines in an attempt to overturn the November 2020 election are becoming clearer, with elements of it being directly linked to the person who circulated a 36-slide Powerpoint presentation on nullifying the results.
An analysis done by Trapezoid News, an only Substack blog, shows that significant sections of Trump draft executive order were lifted from the presentation created by Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel who briefed Republican members of Congress on ways they could prevent Joe Biden from being certified as the winner of the election.
(A caveat: I don’t know the veracity of Trapezoid News; however, the software that they base their analysis on–a piece of software called CopyLeaks that has been used by educators and researchers to identify sources of texts and potential plagiarism–is a legit tool.)
Trapezoid found that more than a quarter of the language used in the Executive Order came from an affidavit attributed to Waldron. That affidavit was shared publicly by Peter Byrne–not the famed Bigfoot hunter, but the former CEO of Overstock.com who has significantly less credibility–as a justification for overturning the election.
The information in the Powerpoint presentation and the affidavit was also tracked to a posting on Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s website from no later than December 29, 2020: a 22-page apparent draft court filing outlining foreign interference in the 2020 election. Much of that document–more than two-thirds of it–is a conclusive match to the draft executive order.
Waldron then becomes the central figure in the creation of the executive order and the subsequent effort to get Congressional Republicans to circumvent the Constitution to reinstall Donald Trump to the Presidency after clearly losing the election.
Waldron’s instruction called for Trump to void the validity of all electronic voting. In 2020, that would have effectively voided the vast majority of ballots cast in the US given that paper ballots were scanned via electronic devices in jurisdictions that did not employ some sort of touchscreen voting. In 2020, nearly 70% of Americans cast ballots in a non-traditional way, with the traditional way being submitting a paper ballot on Election Day.
Waldron’s work was apparently picked up by Powell, who seems to have copy-and-pasted large swaths of the missive into her legal filings without checking any of the legality or factuality of the claims.
This launched Waldron into a form of celebrity in anti-reality/anti-loss acceptable circles. Prior to the election certification, as mentioned previously, he address the House GOP caucus to detail how they could undermine the Constitution. In 2021, he was summoned by Louisiana Republicans to explain how they could negate unfavorable election results. Even though none of his proposals have been confirmed to be legal, Waldron has made a cottage industry on lecturing ways to nullify the choice of voters.
The triumvirate of Powell, Byrne and Waldron appear to be the genesis of the incendiary memo on how to void the will of the voters–and it’s not yet clear how the memo got to Trump and who shot down the idea. What is known, however, is that the Trump cabal read the memo and/or was briefed on the plan, with Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reportedly saying “I love it!” to the part of the plan to assign false electors to vote for Trump.