How 'bewildered' Trump campaign aides would reportedly discreetly escape election challenge meetings

In the immediate aftermath of President-elect Joe Biden's victory in November, the leaders of President Trump's re-election campaign told him he had about a 5 to 10 percent chance of picking up enough outstanding votes in Georgia and Arizona and win a legal challenge against election practices in Wisconsin, which would overturn the results, Axios' Jonathan Swan reports in part of his series on the final two months of Trump's presidency.

Trump initially told his campaign aides — including campaign manager Bill Stepien, senior adviser Jason Miller, and deputy campaign manager Justin Clark — that it was worth a shot, but he was simultaneously listening to another plan presented by attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell that was steeped in conspiracy theories.

The campaign team's plan might not have had much going for it in the long run, but they believed, per Axios, that "a serious search for a path to 270 electoral votes through credible legal challenges" was under way. That illusion was reportedly shattered when Giuliani, Powell, "and a swelling conspiracy crew marched into the room" for the first of multiple meetings.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Unsurprisingly, things did not go well, and whenever the two groups met, the conversation would begin with the campaign's legal strategies before Giuliani and Powell took over. Swan reports that "bewildered campaign aides would look around the table at one another, silently asking what the hell was going on" before one person would "invariably shuffle out of the room." Every few minutes, another would follow until they all reconvened safely in Stepien's office down the hall. Read more at Axios.