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A 394-page Senate report released Thursday offers some of the most alarming details yet about Donald Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.
For weeks after the November election, Trump and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, pressured Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and senior Justice Department MPs to investigate fanciful allegations of electoral fraud, according to the report.
Here are six key points from the report:
Jeffrey Clark was ready to make Trump’s wishes come true and tried to put pressure on the acting attorney general
During a phone call with Trump at the end of December, Rosen was surprised when the president asked him if he had ever heard of “a guy named Jeff Clark”. The investigation struck Rosen as strange; Clark did not work on election-related issues, the report said.
Rosen would later find out that Clark, a little-known Justice Department attorney, had met Trump before, an admission that left him “flabbergasted,” since Clark was his subordinate. On December 28, Clark emailed Rosen and Richard Donoghue, the senior assistant deputy attorney general, with two requests. First, he wanted them to authorize a briefing from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) “on issues of foreign electoral interference.” Clark needed the briefing, the report said, to assess an allegation that a “Dominion [voting] the machine accessed the internet through a smart thermostat with a net connection path leading to China ”.
Clark also wanted the two senior Justice Department officials to sign a letter to lawmakers in Georgia and other states announcing that the Justice Department was investigating electoral irregularities and urging them to convene special legislative sessions to consider other voters lists of electoral colleges. “There is no way I’m signing this letter or anything like that remotely,” Donoghue replied. Rosen, Donoghue and Clark all had a “lively” reunion that evening, in which Rosen and Donoghue made it clear that they would not sign.
Clark tried to use a potential appointment as acting attorney general as leverage to get senior Justice Department officials to sign his letter.
On December 31 or January 1, Clark told Rosen that Trump asked if Clark would be willing to serve as acting attorney general if the president fired Rosen. Clark told Rosen he hadn’t made a decision yet, but wanted to do more “due diligence” on the allegations of voter fraud.
Days later, he told Rosen and Donoghue that it would be easier for him to decline Trump’s offer if Rosen signed his letter. “He brought up another thing he might point out, that he might be able to say no [to the President], is so – this letter, if I reversed my position on the letter, which I was not prepared to do, ”Rosen told the Senate committee.
White House attorneys and other senior DoJ officials threatened to resign if Clark was appointed acting attorney general
On January 3, Clark told Rosen that Trump intended to appoint Clark as acting attorney general that day. This sparked a scramble at the Department of Justice, where Clark and Donoghue briefed the heads of the various divisions in the Department of what was going on. They all agreed to resign if Trump follows through.
Rosen and Donoghue met Trump in the Oval Office that evening. “One thing we do know is that you Rosen won’t do anything to overturn the election,” Trump said to open the meeting, according to Rosen. Pat Cipollone, the White House lawyer, called Clark’s letter a “murder-suicide pact” and threatened to resign if Clark was appointed.
After a three-hour meeting, Trump finally decided not to fire Rosen.
Atlanta US lawyer resigns after Trump threatened to fire him
One of the victims of the January 3 meeting was Byung Jin Pak, who was then a United States prosecutor in Atlanta. During the meeting, Trump fulminated that Pak had not uncovered evidence of electoral fraud and accused him of being a “never trumper.” Trump asked Donoghue to fire Pak. But Donoghue informed Trump that Pak intended to step down the next day. Cipollone advised Trump not to fire someone who was about to resign, and Trump agreed to wait.
There was one problem: Pak intended to stay in his role until inauguration day. That night, Donoghue called Pak and persuaded him to quit earlier.
Trump replaced Pak with Bobby Christine, another federal prosecutor in Georgia, bypassing a Pak deputy who was next to succeed him. Donoghue told the Senate panel he believed Trump wanted Christine because he would be more likely to investigate election irregularities.
Meadows, the White House chief of staff, played a key role in lobbying the Justice Department to investigate absurd election conspiracy theories
On December 29, Meadows asked Rosen to examine a conspiracy theory known as “Italygate” that alleged satellites reversed Trump’s votes for Biden. A few days later, Meadows sent Rosen a YouTube video claiming to contain evidence to support the “Italygate” theory. That same day, Meadows asked Rosen to contact Clark about refuted allegations in Georgia. “Can you believe that? Rosen wrote to Donoghue. “I’m not going to answer.”
Meadows also asked Rosen to meet with Rudy Giuliani, then the president’s personal lawyer, a request Rosen rejected.
Trump lobbied the Justice Department to take Supreme Court legal action to strike down election results in six key states
In late December, Trump called on the Justice Department to make the highly unusual decision of filing an election complaint directly with the United States Supreme Court. The lawsuit reportedly asked the court to overturn Biden’s electoral victories in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.
The Office of the Solicitor General (GSO) and the Office of the Legal Counsel (OLC) prepared notes explaining why the ministry could not take legal action. “Among other obstacles, OSG explained that the DOJ could not bring an initial action before the Supreme Court in favor of a political candidate,” the Senate report said.
A plain English memo from OLC was more direct. “[T]there is no legal basis for bringing this lawsuit.
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