Takeaways from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Report on Trump’s Coup Attempt

Trump has made a direct call on the Justice Department nine times to undermine the election result, and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows violated administration policy by putting pressure on a Justice Department lawyer to investigate allegations of electoral fraud, according to the report, which is based on interviews with witnesses of former senior Justice Department officials.

The series of interactions between the President and Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue, then Deputy Commander of the Department of Justice, began in mid-December with an Oval Office meeting, included several phone calls and continued until January 3.

In several calls, Trump claimed there had been electoral fraud in Pennsylvania and Arizona – the two states he lost – telling Rosen “people say” and asking the Department of Justice to look into them. rumors, according to the committee.

“You don’t follow the internet like I do,” Trump said at one point, according to Donoghue and Rosen.

Rosen told the president the department “can’t and won’t just flip a switch and change the election.” This prompted Trump to simply request an official announcement from the Justice Department that the election was corrupt, and then “leave the rest to me and the [Republican] Members of Congress, ”the commission report said.

The DOJ did not – and did not – find widespread election fraud, and simultaneously Trump’s campaign was filing lawsuits to reject millions of votes in the swing states.

Republicans continue to downplay Trump’s actions

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley’s office released a GOP version of events that largely absolves Trump of any wrongdoing.

The Republican rebuttal report claims that “the available evidence shows that President Trump did not use the Justice Department to overturn the election.” Ultimately, he argues that “Trump listened to his advisers, including senior Justice Department officials and White House lawyers, and followed their recommendations.”

Grassley told reporters on Thursday he did not understand how Democrats came to such a different conclusion than Republicans on Trump’s actions between election day and the Jan. 3 meeting with Justice Department officials .

“I don’t know how you can draw a conclusion except that Trump asked everyone in the White House to discuss it and unanimously except one they said you shouldn’t do what the ‘lawyer said he thought the president should get it done, “Grassley said.” The president dismissed it. The president did the right thing. “

He continued, “How does that create any kind of problem? In fact, if he had made another decision, you would have had a problem.”

“Read the transcripts and you will come to the same conclusion as my report,” Grassley concluded.

Senate Democrats Highlight Threat Live

Despite Grassley and his fellow Republicans ‘conclusion, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the Democrats’ findings highlight a threat that continues to this day, more than six months after pro-Trump rioters took over. storms the US Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress. to certify the electoral victory of President Joe Biden.

Trump continues to make false claims about the 2020 election and to support fictitious “audits” of the vote count in key states he has lost in an attempt to overturn the result.

Trump tried to play Clark against Rosen

The Democrats’ nearly 400-page report offers new details about the Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting between Trump, White House attorneys, and DOJ officials that took place after Clark revealed that the former president planned to install him as Acting Attorney General that day.

Specifically, the report describes how Trump made Rosen and Clark compete for the post of attorney general during the nearly three-hour meeting. Ultimately, Trump decided not to replace Rosen with Clark, but the report also details how discussions of Clark’s plan in Georgia became inextricably linked to discussions of his replacement with Rosen.

“According to Rosen, Trump opened the meeting by saying, ‘One thing we know is that you, Rosen, will not do anything to overturn the election,'” the report reads.

Clark had pushed Rosen and Donoghue to ask the Justice Department to announce investigations into electoral fraud and ask Georgia’s heads of state to nominate voters, potentially ignoring the certified popular vote. Clark began pitching in late December after speaking directly with Trump, the committee found.

Over the next three hours, the group had what Donoghue called ‘a high-profile conversation’, centered on whether Trump should replace the DOJ leadership, install Clark in Rosen’s place and send the letter proposed by Clark – and whether Clark was even qualified to take on the post of Acting Attorney General Rosen and Donoghue told us that at this point Clark’s proposed letter and his potential role as Acting Attorney General was closely related, ”he adds.

The report goes on to note that at some point during the meeting, DOJ officials and White House lawyers made it clear that there would be massive resignations if Trump moved forward by replacing Rosen with Clark – something that ‘he told the committee was “important context” for the then president as he weighed his decision.

Donoghue and Rosen also recalled White House attorneys Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin rejecting plans to replace Rosen with Clark, with Cipollone calling Clark’s letter a “murder-suicide pact” and the two White House attorneys stating that they would also resign, according to the report.

Despite the threat of massive resignations, Trump “continued for some time to consider installing Clark in Rosen’s place,” the report notes. He also indicates that Donoghue told the panel that Trump only rejected Clark’s proposal “‘very deep into the conversation’, in the last 15 minutes of the two to three hour meeting.”

The delay of the National Archives could cause problems for the select committee 1/6

The report clearly highlights another major hurdle for those investigating the origins of January 6: Trump White House’s custodian of records, the National Archives and Records Administration, can’t help much — at least not for the moment.

“NARA has not responded to date and told the Committee that the delay in transitioning Trump electronic records from the White House to NARA could prevent the Committee from getting a response for several months,” the report says. .

The National Archives’ inability to provide records becomes more significant if, or perhaps when, Trump allies refuse to hand over their own records during this time. To put it simply: archives are sort of a back-up plan in case others refuse to comply with the summons.

When asked about the report’s claim that there was a delay in the transmission of the documents and whether this could pose a challenge in meeting the January 6 select committee’s request, the National Archives would only say that they “received the May 20, 2021 request of the Senate Judiciary Committee and will respond to it in accordance with the Presidential Records Act (44 USC Chap. 22), Executive Order 13489, and NARA regulations at 36 CFR Part 1270. ”

US attorney asked to resign after Trump announced he would fire him

Trump asked the DOJ to fire an American lawyer after complaining “they hadn’t found anything” in Atlanta.

The report further sheds light on the mystery surrounding the abrupt departure of BJay Pak, the Trump-appointed American lawyer from Atlanta who resigned suddenly on January 4, after previously telling associates he would not resign until the nomination. .

Trump had told senior Justice Department and White House officials that he intended to fire Pak for not doing enough to investigate suspected election fraud, according to the report. Officials convinced Trump to let them get an immediate resignation from Pak instead.

Trump, according to Donohue, grumbled at the Oval Office meeting that Pak was “never-Trumper.” Trump also asked Donohue to replace Pak with Savannah U.S. Attorney Bobby Christine, bypassing the normal chain of succession that would have instead elevated a career civil servant to the Atlanta office. Donohue told the panel that Trump said something like “Well, if this guy is good maybe something will be done,” which Donohue interpreted as some kind of investigation that hadn’t been done. done.

In fact, Pak – at the behest of then Attorney General William Barr, who left in late December – took additional steps to investigate questionable allegations of electoral fraud, according to the report, even after election officials Georgians have refuted the allegations. . Barr asked Pak to make it a “top priority” to examine Rudy Giuliani’s claims about a suitcase supposedly containing ballots at a voting site in Georgia, Pak testified in the Senate. .

Pak eventually reported to Justice Department officials that “there was no substance to the allegations,” he testified.