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BREAKING NEWS 30  JULY 2021


BREAKING NEWS

Donald Trump pressed Justice Dept. officials in December to say the election was corrupt to help him try to overturn the results, documents show.

Friday, July 30, 2021 11:27 AM EST

"Leave the rest to me" and to congressional allies, the former president is said to have told top law enforcement officials.

The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda. They are also the latest example of Mr. Trump's wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.
The demands are the latest example of President Trump's wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.

Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

by Katie Benner

WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though theyhad found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The NewYork Times.

The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that istypically more independent from the White House to advance his personalagenda. They are also the latest example of Mr. Trump's wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.

The exchange unfolded during aphone call on Dec. 27 in which Mr. Trump pressed the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and his deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, on voter fraud claims that the department had disproved. Mr. Donoghue warned that the department had no power to change the outcome of the election. Mr. Trump replied that he did not expect that, according to notes Mr. Donoghue took memorializing the conversation.

"Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me" and to congressional allies, Mr. Donoghue wrote in summarizing Mr. Trump's response.

Mr.Trump did not name the lawmakers, but at other points during the call, he mentioned Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, whom he described as a "fighter"; Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania,who at the time promoted the idea that the election was stolen from Mr.Trump; and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, whom Mr. Trump praised for "getting to bottom of things."

The notes connect Mr. Trump's allies in Congress with his campaign to pressure Justice Department officials to help undermine, or even nullify, the election results.

Mr. Jordan ultimately voted to overturn the election resultsin key states, but has downplayed his role in the president's pressure campaign. "Congressman Jordan did not, has not, and would not pressure anyone at the Justice Department about the 2020 election," said his spokesman, Russell Dye. "He continues to agree with President Trump thatit is perfectly appropriate to raise concerns about election integrity."
 
Mr.Perry and Mr. Johnson did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mr. Perry has continued to assert Mr. Trump won, but has not been tied directly to the White House effort to keep him in office. And Mr. Johnson, whom Mr. Trump recently endorsed as he weighs whether to seek a third term, maintains that it is reasonable to have questions about the integrity of the election, though he has recognized Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president.

The Justice Department provided Mr. Donoghue's notes to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is investigating the Trump administration's efforts to unlawfully reverse the election results.

Typically, the department has fought to keep secret any accounts of private discussions between a president and his cabinet to avoid setting a precedent that would prevent officials in future administrations from candidly advising presidents out of concern that their conversations would later be made public.

But handing over the notes to Congress is part of a pattern of allowing scrutiny of Mr. Trump's efforts to overturn the election. The Biden Justice Department also told Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and other former officials this week that they could provide unrestricted testimony to investigators with the House Oversight and Reform and the Senate Judiciary Committees.


Image

Richard P. Donoghue, the Justice Department's No. 2 official, pushed back on Mr. Trump's allegations of election fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona.

RichardP. Donoghue, the Justice Department's No. 2 official, pushed back on Mr. Trump's allegations of election fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona.Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times



The department reasoned that congressional investigators were examining potential wrongdoing by a sitting president, an extraordinary circumstance, according to letters sent to the former officials. Becauseexecutive privilege is meant to benefit the country, rather than the president as an individual, invoking it over Mr. Trump's efforts to pushhis personal agenda would be inappropriate, the department concluded.

"The see hand-written notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation's top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free andfair election in the final days of his presidency," Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement.

Mr.Trump's conversation with Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue reflected his single-minded focus on overturning the election results. At one point, Mr. Trump claimed voter fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona, which he called "corrupted elections." Mr. Donoghue pushed back.

"Much of the info you're getting is false," Mr. Donoghue said, adding that the department had conducted "dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews" and had not found evidence to support his claims. "We look at allegations but they don't pan out," the officials told Mr. Trump, according to the notes.

The department found that the error rate of ballot counting in Michigan was0.0063 percent, not the 68 percent that the president asserted; it did not find evidence of a conspiracy theory that an employee in Pennsylvania had tampered with ballots; and after examining video and interviewing witnesses, it found no evidence of ballot fraud in Fulton County, Ga., according to the notes.

Mr.Trump, undeterred, brushed off the department's findings. "Ok fine — but what about the others?" Mr. Donoghue wrote in his notes describing the president's remarks. Mr. Trump asked Mr. Donoghue to travel to Fulton County to verify signatures on ballots.

The people "saying that the election isn't corrupt are corrupt," Mr. Trump told the officials, adding that they needed to act. "Not much time left."

At another point, Mr. Donoghue said that the department could quickly verify or disprove the assertion that more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there are voters.

"Shouldbe able to check on that quickly, but understand that the D.O.J. can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election, doesn't work that way," Mr. Donoghue wrote in his notes.

The officials also told Mr. Trump that the Justice Department had no evidence to support a lawsuit regarding the election results. "We are not in a position based on the evidence," they said. "We can only act onthe actual evidence developed."

Mr. Trump castigated the officials, saying that "thousands of people called" their local U.S. attorney's offices to complain about the election and that "nobody trusts the F.B.I." He said that "people are angry — blamingD.O.J. for inaction."

"You guys may not be following the internet the way I do," Mr. Trump said, according to the document.

In a moment of foreshadowing, Mr. Trump said, "people tell me Jeff Clark is great, I should put him in," referring to the acting chief of the Justice Department's civil division, who had also encouraged department officials to intervene in the election. "People want me to replace D.O.J. leadership."

"You should have the leadership you want," Mr. Donoghue replied. But it "won't change the dept's position."

Mr.Donoghue and Mr. Rosen did not know that Mr. Perry had introduced Mr. Clark and Mr. Trump. Exactly one week later, they would be forced to fight Mr. Clark for their jobs in an Oval Office showdown.

During the call, Mr. Trump also told the Justice Department officials to "figure out what to do" with Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden's son. "People willcriticize the D.O.J. if he's not investigated for real," he told them, violating longstanding guidelines against White House intervention in criminal investigations or other law enforcement actions.

Two days after the phone call with Mr. Trump, Mr. Donoghue took notes of a meeting between Justice Department officials: Mr. Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows; the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone; and the White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin met to discuss a conspiracy theory known as Italygate, which asserts without evidence that people inItaly used military technology to remotely tamper with voting machines in the United States.

The Justice Department officials told the White House that they had assigned someoneto look into the matter, according to the notes and a person briefed onthe meeting. They did not mention that the department was looking into the theory to debunk it, the person said.

Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.
 

Kris~ Dreamweaver
www.poetrypoem.com/Dreamweaver
29th July 2021.















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