President Trump tried to seize voting machines during 2020 election, report says

NEW YORK - About six weeks after President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he told his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to contact the Department of Homeland Security to ask if the department could lawfully seize voting machines in key swing states, according to a report in The New York Times. 

Giuliani contacted a top official there, but was rebuffed, the paper says.

Shortly before the DHS episode, the President had an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General William Barr, according to The Times. President Trump broached the idea with Barr that the Justice Department, which Barr led, could take machines. Barr immediately rejected that, The Times reports.

The new revelations come after a rally the former president had Saturday in Texas at which he floated pardons for those charged with participating in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

"If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly," he said. "And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons."

President Trump has not yet announced his candidacy for 2024, although he sounded like a man prepared to run. 

"We are going to take back the White House," he told the crowd.

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