Trump reportedly considered replacing his acting GA with one willing to challenge election results

In the final weeks of his presidency, former President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the results of the national election in Georgia by pressuring officials to “find” votes for him. And according to a new New York Times report, Trump’s efforts went beyond that: he was also considering replacing the acting U.S. attorney general with one sympathetic to his efforts to force a change in the results of the Georgia.

The Times’ Katie Benner reports that Trump and Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer with responsibility for the Civil Division, devised a plan that would have seen the Department of Justice work to unduly keep Trump in power by replacing the Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen – who had refused to accept Trump’s attempts to undermine the election results – with Clark.

A wave of DOJ officials, informed of the plan by conference call on Jan. 3, threatened to resign if that happened, according to the Times report. This threat, along with a contentious meeting between Rosen, Clark and Trump in which each DOJ official presented their case to the president, would have dissuaded Trump from replacing Rosen in the end.

But if the effort had been made, the Justice Department would likely have become involved in the effort to overturn the election, giving it legitimacy and legal backing it had failed to secure as a result of the failure of dozens of lawsuits that falsely alleged electoral irregularities.

A former Justice Department official called the effort to replace Rosen “an attempted Justice Department coup – instigated by the President of the United States” on Twitter Friday.

For his part, Clark denied the existence of a plan to fire Rosen and told The Times that he had simply advised the president.

“My practice is to rely on sworn testimony to assess disputed factual allegations,” he said. “There was a frank discussion of the options, pros and cons with the President. It is unfortunate that those who have participated in a privileged legal conversation publicly comment on these internal deliberations, while distorting the discussions.

Changing the direction of the DOJ would have been one of Trump’s latest attempts to overturn the election. Beyond his unsuccessful legal challenges in battlefield states, Trump had also previously attempted to harness the power of the DOJ by asking Rosen to investigate Dominion Voting Systems, a company that makes high-performance hardware and software. vote, and which has been the subject of false declarations of vote. falsification. The former president also called on the Justice Department to support his state-level campaign prosecution, and was turned down.

Trump further asked Rosen to appoint special advisers to investigate the refuted allegations of voter fraud, which Rosen refused to do. Rosen confirmed the findings of his predecessor, former Attorney General William Barr, that allegations of widespread voter fraud were not supported by evidence.

And in one of the most shocking and brazen efforts, Trump called on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to ask him to “find” enough votes to overturn President Joe Biden’s narrow margin of victory, even after it was confirmed by two recounts. This call would have taken place on the same day that Trump had the newly discovered conversations with DOJ officials.

These efforts eventually culminated in a rally in Washington, DC on January 6, in which Trump repeated his false claims that there were irregularities with the election – and in which he stoked a crowd who then took stormed the US Capitol, leading to his second impeachment. .

Trump faces impeachment trial over his efforts to overturn election

Trump was impeached on January 13 in the House for alleged “incitement to insurgency.” The impeachment article also argues that Trump “betrayed his confidence as president” by trying to coerce officials into supporting his efforts to overturn the election, as he allegedly did with Rosen. If convicted of these crimes in the Senate, Trump could be barred from performing public office again.

Senate leaders finally reached a deal on Friday to begin this trial on February 9. This came after a debate over the start time – with Democrats fearing that the start of the trial would immediately delay confirmations from many of those named by Biden, and Republicans wanting Trump to have an extended period to prepare his defense.

The House will deliver the article to the Senate on Monday, and the senators will be sworn in as jurors on Tuesday, but oral argument will not begin on February 9, and leaders have signaled that they hope to reach a verdict by the end of the week. .

By delaying the start of two weeks, the Biden administration will be able to prioritize relief from Covid-19 and confirmation of Cabinet positions, Schumer said on Friday. And a spokesperson for McConnell said the delay gave Trump proper due process.

Trump has started building his defense team. His longtime lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led Trump’s failed attempts to overturn the election results in court, won’t be on it; last week he said he could not act as a lawyer because he witnessed the rally on January 6.

Instead, South Carolina attorney Karl “Butch” Bowers, Jr., will lead Trump’s legal team. Bowers works for a small business in Columbia, South Carolina, and has been described as a more measured figure than the pompous Giuliani. Bowers previously successfully defended former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford in his own impeachment hearing in 2009, after the Sanford extramarital affair came to light.