New York Times: Trump and DOJ lawyer intended to replace acting GA and overturn Georgia election result



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Clark – who appealed to the former president’s false allegations of electoral fraud – met with Trump earlier this month and told Rosen after the meeting that the then president was going to replace him with Clark. Clark would then take action to prevent Congress from certifying the election results in favor of then-president-elect Joe Biden, according to the newspaper.

Rosen demanded to hear the news directly from Trump, according to the newspaper, and arranged a meeting on the evening of Jan. 3 – the same day as Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump pressured the state official to find enough votes for him to win Georgia, has been revealed.

During the meeting, Rosen, another senior Justice Department official, and Clark met with Trump, White House attorney Pat Cipollone, and other attorneys. Trump asked Rosen and Clark to present their cases for him, The Times reported. The Times quoted two officials who compared Rosen and Clark’s opposing arguments at the meeting to an episode of “The Apprentice,” Trump’s former reality TV show.

Citing four former Trump administration officials, the newspaper reported that a deal among department leaders that they would all resign if Rosen was sacked helped Trump remove his acting attorney general. The notion of a pandemonium within the department, Congressional investigations, and the backlash from his fellow Republican colleagues seemed to resonate with Trump, who after nearly three hours decided to allow Rosen to stay and determined that Clark’s plan would not. would not work, according to the Times.

CNN has contacted the Justice Department for comment. Clark told The Times that his report contained unspecified inaccuracies and that he could not speak about his conversations with Trump or the department’s lawyers.

“Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommon, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties,” he told the newspaper. “All my official communications were in accordance with the law.”

Trump declined to comment for the Times. One of his advisers told the newspaper that the former president pushed to investigate “the rampant electoral fraud that has plagued our system for years” and that “any claim to the contrary is false and motivated by those who wish to maintain the broken system “.

The Times reported that Trump pressured Rosen early on in his role as Acting Attorney General to appoint special counsels to investigate unsubstantiated allegations that the integrity of the election was largely compromised, and specifically to investigate Dominion voting systems, which Trump falsely claimed to have perpetuated on a large scale. fraud.

Rosen refused, telling Trump that such a move would be inconsistent with the ministry’s lack of election fraud findings, the newspaper reported. Trump continued to pressure him, wondering why the ministry hadn’t found evidence and accusing him of not standing up for him, while Rosen and Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue resisted. Unbeknownst to them, a Pennsylvania politician had linked Trump to Clark, who told the then president he agreed the fraud tainted the election results, according to the Times.

Clark, who had become the acting head of the civilian division in September, was quickly adopted by Trump after their meeting, according to the newspaper.

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