The Democrats’ report chronicles Trump’s relentless prodding of the Justice Department during a turbulent stretch in late December and early January to investigate suspected voter fraud and to support his efforts to undo the results. Trump had laid the groundwork for that effort even before the election when he attacked the vote-by-mail process.
But he escalated it significantly after election day and particularly after the December resignation of attorney-general William Barr,who weeks before he left the Justice Department told The Associated Press that the department had not found fraud that could affect the outcome of the election.
In one White House meeting recounted for Senate investigators,Jeffrey Rosen,who served as Barr’s deputy and briefly led the department after Barr left,described how Trump,in an effort to initiate a department inquiry,showed videos of “somebody delivering a suitcase of ballots”.
Rosen said he recalled saying to Trump,“I really want to suggest to you,sir,respectfully,that it would be a better thing for everyone to use this last month to focus on some of the things that had been accomplished in the last four years – tax reform and the vaccine,Operation Warp Speed,and not go into this ‘the election was corrupt’.”
The pressure campaign by Trump and his allies included a draft brief the White House wanted the Justice Department to file with the Supreme Court to overturn the election results. The department refused to file the document,which the Senate report describes as raising a “litany of false and debunked claims”.
Loading
The conflict culminated in a contentious,hours-long meeting at the White House on January 3 in which Trump openly considered replacing Rosen as acting attorney-general with Clark,an assistant attorney general. The Democrats’ report says Trump told Rosen:“One thing we know is you,Rosen,aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election.”
Clark had positioned himself as more sympathetic to pursuing Trump’s fraud claims even though the results were certified by states and Republican election officials. Courts rejected dozens of legal challenges to the election and Barr,Trump’s own attorney-general,had said Biden won fairly.
Clark declined to be interviewed voluntarily by the committee.
But several officials in the January 3 meeting told Trump they would resign if he put Clark in charge at the Justice Department. According to witnesses interviewed by the Senate committee’s majority staff,White House counsel Pat Cipollone referred to a draft letter from Clark pushing Georgia officials to convene a special legislative session on the election results as a “murder-suicide pact.” Cipollone threatened to quit.
Richard Donoghue,who was Rosen’s deputy at the time,replied there was “no chance” he would sign that letter or “anything remotely like that”. Donoghue told the committee that he told Trump that all of the assistant attorneys-general,and perhaps US attorneys and other senior department officials,would resign en masse if the president were to replace Rosen with Clark.
Georgia emerged as a particular area of focus for Trump,who sought the removal of the top prosecutor in Atlanta,BJay Pak,claiming that he was a “never Trumper,” according to the report. Pak had originally planned to stay on in the position until Inauguration Day,January 20,but resigned weeks earlier than that because of the pressure from Trump.
Besides Clark,Trump found another ally in Republican Scott Perry,who has disputed the validity of Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania and called Donoghue on December 27 to say the department wasn’t doing its job with respect to the elections. Perry encouraged Donoghue to call on Clark to help because he’s “the kind of guy who could really get in there and do something about this,” according to the report.
AP