An administration official described the president’s strategy to overturn the election results as: “Let’s throw a giant plate of spaghetti at the wall and hope that at least one noodle sticks.”…

White House counsel Pat Cipollone and chief of staff Mark Meadows firmly pushed back both on the president’s effort to name Ms. Powell special counsel and on Mr. Giuliani’s Department of Homeland Security outreach, one of the people said. Mike Flynn, the former national security adviser whom Mr. Trump pardoned last month, was also at the meeting…

Earlier in the week, the president in a meeting with Ken Cuccinelli, the No. 2 official at DHS, raised the prospect of the department seizing voter machines as part of the effort to pursue allegations of voter fraud, according to people familiar with the meeting. Lawyers and Mr. Meadows pushed back in the meeting, saying the agency lacked the authority to do so, and Mr. Cuccinelli agreed, the people said.

On Thursday, Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Cuccinelli and again pushed the agency to take control of voter machines, the people said. He was again told the agency doesn’t have the authority to do so.