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SENATE REPORT GIVES NEW DETAILS OF TRUMP EFFORTS TO USE JUSTICE DEPT. TO
OVERTURN ELECTION


President Donald Trump (Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images)
By Devlin Barrett
October 7, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. EDT
By Devlin Barrett
October 7, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. EDT
Share this story

A Senate report on President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020
election offers new details about an Oval Office confrontation between Trump and
the Justice Department, revealing the extent to which government lawyers
threatened to resign en masse if the president removed his attorney general.

2021 Election: Complete coverage and analysisArrowRight

The interim report by the Senate Judiciary Committee was issued Thursday. While
Republicans on the panel offered their counter-findings, arguing that Trump did
not subvert the justice system to remain in power, the majority report by the
Democrats offers the most detailed account to date of the struggle inside the
administration’s final, desperate days.

The report underscores the gaping political divide that has emerged in this
country over one of the most basic functions of government — conducting free and
fair elections. Democrats charge Trump nearly provoked a constitutional crisis,
but for the steady hands of senior Justice Department officials; Republicans say
Trump was “faithful” to his sworn duty as president in seeking assurances about
voter integrity.

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Both parties are bracing for larger fights over a congressional investigation
into the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol.

Just three days before that melee, then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen,
his deputy Richard Donoghue, and a few other administration officials met in the
Oval Office for a final confrontation on Trump’s plan to replace Rosen with
Jeffrey Clark, a little-known Justice Department official who had indicated he
would publicly pursue Trump’s false claims of mass voter fraud.

Read the report: ‘Subverting Justice: How the former president and his allies
pressured DOJ to overturn the 2020 election’


The roots of former president Donald Trump’s power in the Republican Party can
be traced back to the backlash following the 2008 election and financial crisis.
(Blair Guild, JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

According to testimony Rosen gave to the committee, Trump opened the meeting by
saying, “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to
overturn the election.”

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For three hours, the officials then debated Trump’s plan, and the insistence by
Rosen and others that they would resign rather than go along with it.

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During the meeting, Donoghue and another Justice Department official made clear
that all of the Justice Department’s assistant attorneys general “would resign
if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark,” the report says. “Donoghue added that the
mass resignations likely would not end there, and that U.S. Attorneys and other
DOJ officials might also resign en masse.”

The details of the report were first reported by the New York Times.

A key issue in the meeting was a letter that Clark and Trump wanted the Justice
Department to send to Georgia officials warning of “irregularities” in voting
and suggesting the state legislature get involved in questioning the election
results. Clark thought the letter should also be sent to officials in other
states where Trump supporters were contesting winning Biden vote totals, the
report said.

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Rosen and Donoghue had refused to send such a letter, infuriating Trump.
According to the report, the president thought that if he installed Clark as the
new attorney general, the letter would go out, fueling his bid to toss out Biden
victories in a handful of states.

The Senate report says opposition to the idea came not only from the Justice
Department but from the top White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, who made clear
that he and his deputy also would quit if Trump went through with his plan.

At one point in the meeting, Cipollone called Clark’s letter a “murder-suicide
pact,” for the chain reaction it would be likely to set off inside the
government, the report says.

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Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the committee’s chairman, told reporters
Trump’s attempt to “take over” the Justice Department was “stopped by a handful
of people who stood up for principle and against Trump’s strategy.”

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“And then three days later, in desperation, Donald Trump turned the mob loose on
this capital,” the senator said. “It was a desperate strategy by a desperate
man.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), said in an emailed statement that the committee’s
interviews show “Jeffrey Rosen conducted himself honorably and the Department of
Justice operated as it is designed to.”

A lawyer for Clark did not immediately comment.

Trump to acting AG: ‘Just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me’



Leading up to the Jan. 3 meeting, Trump had pressed Rosen in a string of phone
calls to pursue false or fanciful claims of voter fraud. Rosen had largely
resisted those entreaties, while saying the department would pursue meaningful
allegations of wrongdoing.

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Rosen’s predecessor, William P. Barr, had already declared, in early December,
that there was no evidence of the kind of widespread voter fraud that could
change the outcome of the election.

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The counter-report by committee Republicans that was released Thursday
emphasized that Trump ultimately backed away from the plan to replace Rosen with
Clark and issue Clark’s letter.

“President Trump’s actions were consistent with his responsibilities as
President to faithfully execute the law and oversee the Executive Branch,” it
says.

Given Trump’s long-running distrust of the FBI’s handling of the 2016 election,
the report says, it was “reasonable that President Trump maintained substantial
skepticism concerning the DOJ’s and FBI’s neutrality and their ability to
adequately investigate election fraud allegations in a thorough and unbiased
manner.”



Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.

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