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A Senate committee report released Thursday detailed new instances where former President Donald Trump and his allies sought to use the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election.
With new testimony from officials who served in the highest echelons of the DOJ at the time, the Senate Judicial Democrats’ report offers the most comprehensive examination to date of new and previously reported details of Trump’s maneuvers before the insurrection of January 6 to fabricate doubts about his defeat to Joe Biden.
In unseen details of a Jan. 3 meeting at the Oval Office, Trump’s relentless efforts to try to replace Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with a loyalist who has sworn he will help Trump use the department to investigate the 2020 elections has been met. a superb demonstration of resistance.
“Trump opened the meeting by saying, ‘One thing we know is that you Rosen are not going to do anything to overturn the election,” Rosen said.
The meeting lasted about three hours, according to the report, and Rosen and his then senior deputy, Richard Donoghue, told the president that if he continued with the installation of Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, they and a wave of other top Justice Ministry officials would resign en masse.
Meeting officials also debated a proposal by Clark to send a letter to Georgia state officials, previously reported by ABC News, which urged Georgian officials to investigate unsubstantiated fraud allegations and may -being to undo President Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
It was at this point, according to Donoghue, that White House attorney Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin made it clear to Trump that they would also resign if Clark was installed, with Cipollone describing the letter from Georgia as a “murder-suicide pact” that “would damage anyone and everything they touch.”
It was only towards the end of the meeting that the President gave in to his intention to install Clark and have him send the letter, Rosen and Donoghue both testified.
In a separate report released by the minority part of the committee, Republican senators repeatedly sought to point out that Trump never implemented the various plans to force the Justice Department into the election, claiming that Trump “had listened to his advisers, including high places.” DOJ officials and White House lawyers and followed their recommendations. “
The Democrats’ report further details efforts by Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., Who led efforts to oppose Pennsylvania’s electoral count after the Jan.6 riot, to introduce Jeffrey Clark to Trump and his direct communication with Rosen MP Donoghue. false allegations of electoral fraud in his state.
The Senate committee’s majority report recommends in several areas that the January 6 House select committee use its powers to further investigate several other similar allegations by outside parties seeking to pressure the Justice Department to act. involved in the election, including a direct call to further investigate Perry’s allegations. efforts. The report could help provide a roadmap for the ongoing Jan.6 committee investigation, which has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to compel witnesses close to the president to detail their interactions with him ahead of the attempted insurgency.
Perry and his office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Transcripts of the committee’s interviews with Rosen and Donoghue reveal their obvious unease over repeated contacts by Trump and his allies to investigate bogus allegations of voter fraud, as well as their confusion over Clark’s behind-the-scenes efforts to ensure that the Justice Department intervened in the election on Trump’s behalf.
Neither Rosen nor his chief of staff responded to an ABC News request for comment.
As ABC News previously reported, the committee received emails in which Clark not only sought to send a draft letter to Georgia that would raise baseless allegations of voter fraud and urge them to delay certification. of Joe Biden’s victory, but he raised some bizarre conspiracy theories. on election machines hacked into by thermostats that could somehow connect voting systems to the Internet.
“I was confused, like in, what’s going on with Jeff Clark?” Rosen told the committee.
Following their report Thursday, Senate Democrats said they sent a formal referral to the DC Bar Disciplinary Board office to assess Clark’s conduct. Clark, who has denied any wrongdoing in previous statements regarding his post-election actions, is still under investigation by the DOJ Inspector General’s office.
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