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NI BARBARA SPRUNT
A group of emails released by Democrats to the House Oversight Committee appear to paint a clearer picture of how former President Donald Trump and his allies attempted to force the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the failure. proven claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
The 232 -page documents detail the unprecedented pressure campaign undertaken by Trump, along with his chief of staff and other allies, to get senior Justice Department officials to challenge the election results. in the face of Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
In one instance, Trump pointed to embarrassing voter fraud claims on former Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen less than an hour before presidential Attorney General William Barr tweeted that he publicly said that no evidence of widespread election fraud will go down and be replaced. by Rosen.
Former President Donald Trump addressed the annual state council of the North Carolina Republican Party on June 5. CREDIT: Melissa Sue Gerrits / Getty Images
The newly released emails also highlight numerous conspiracy theories around election fraud pushed by then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. On December 30, 2020, Meadows emailed Rosen a translation of a document saying there was a plot where U.S. election data was altered at Italian facilities and loaded onto “military satellites.” and that Trump is “clearly the winner.”
After Meadows posted a YouTube link on Jan. 1 detailing the conspiracy theory, Rosen forwarded the email to former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, who replied: “Pure insanity.”
A cache of documents revealed that Meadows emailed Rosen multiple times to share unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud or ask him to take steps to change the election results.
The documents also highlighted how Trump used White House canal officials, including a private lawyer, to instruct the Justice Department to file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court with the intent of the court declaring that the Electoral College vote counted in six states that Trump lost could not be high. The draft complaint circulated by Trump’s White House aide to Rosen, Donoghue and Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall requested that the court order a “special election” for the president in six states.
The release of the documents to the public came after the committee submitted a request in late May to the Justice Department for documents related to the Trump administration’s efforts to overthrow the election.
“These documents show that President Trump tried to discredit our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overthrow an election he lost,” Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, DN.Y., said in a statement on Tuesday. “Those who assisted or witnessed President Trump’s illegal actions must answer the Committee’s questions about the attempted denial of democracy.”
The Oversight Committee held a second hearing on the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol incident on Tuesday afternoon and requested that several former Trump administration officials appear for a “transcript interview” in an effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Those people are: Meadows; Donoghue, who served as acting deputy attorney general at the time; former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark; former Associate Deputy Attorney General Patrick Hovakimian; and former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Byung Jin Pak.
Trump and his allies also pressured state officials in Georgia to overturn the election results there. In December 2020, Trump personally called a Georgia law enforcement official and asked him to look for evidence of voter fraud, and then in early January 2021 he asked the secretary of state to “find “enough votes for him to win. In February, the Fulton County district attorney announced a criminal investigation into Trump’s actions to interfere with Georgia election results.
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