Donald Trump is pushing pals to propagate the odd notion that he will be “reinstated” as president in August.

According to a New York Times reporter, former President Donald Trump has indicated that he expects to be restored by August.

The theory has gained traction among Trump’s MAGA followers, and is predicated on the premise that Republican “audits” of election results in Arizona and Georgia may reverse Joe Biden’s election triumph.

New York Times’ Washington Correspondent Maggie Haberman wrote, “Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no that isn’t how it works but simply sharing the information).”

In a statement shared on Twitter, Haberman added that “that isn’t how it works but simply sharing the information,” pointing to a CNN article on Trump fans and QAnon followers awaiting a coup that would restore Trump to the White House.

Haberman says “it isn’t happening in a vacuum” but it appears to be part of Trump’s effort to avoid being indicted. “He is not putting out statements about the ‘audits’ in states just for the sake of it,” Haberman writes. “He’s been laser focused on them, according to several people who’ve spoken with him.”

“Trump is trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief — not as a fundraising tool or an infantile bit of trolling or a trial balloon, but as a fact.”

Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell told the conference attendees that Trump can simply be reinstated and that “a new inauguration day is set.”

Former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn attended the same gathering, according to CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, and appeared to embrace the concept of a “Myanmar-style coup” to restore Trump to the presidency—though he has since sought to backtrack on that statement.

Flynn, Powell, and others met with Trump at the White House in December 2020 to purportedly discuss the former national security adviser’s proposal to declare martial rule in order to prevent Biden from becoming president. As some of Trump’s aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn’s most outlandish comments about reversing the election, the meeting was reported to have deteriorated “into screaming matches at certain points.”

For months, the anti-democratic conspiracy idea has been circulating in fringe right media.

“No American should advocate or support the violent overthrow of the United States,” Rep. Liz Cheney, who was booted out of leadership by her Republican colleagues for consistently dismissing the previous president’s accusations of election fraud, tweeted.