WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald J. Trump pressured top Justice Department officials late last year to announce the election was marred by widespread fraud, so he and his congressional allies could use the experiment to reverse the result. , According to new documents provided to lawmakers.
The questions were an unusual example of a president intervening in an agency that is more independent of the White House to advance his own agenda. It is also a recent example of Mr. Trump’s extensive campaign in recent weeks to represent the election results.
On December 27, during a phone call, Mr. Trump was questioned by then-Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosson and his deputy, Richard P. Donohu, about whether the Department of Justice had found any evidence of voter fraud. Evidence b. Mr Donoghu warned that the department had no power to change the outcome of the election. Mr. Trump did not expect this, and according to notes, Mr. Donog took note of the discussion.
“The election was flawed + leave the rest to me alone,” wrote Dononghu, a congressman, summarizing Trump’s response.
Mr. Trump did not name lawmakers, but did refer to Ohio Rep. Representative Scott Perry, a Republican from Pennsylvania, who promoted the idea that the election was stolen from Trump; And Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who praised Mr. Trump for “going down.”
Mr. Jordan and Mr. Johnson played no role in Mr. Trump’s bid for justice.
Mr Jordanian spokesman Russell Dye, who voted to overturn the election results in key states, said: Presidential pressure campaign. He continues to agree with President Trump that it is appropriate to raise concerns about election integrity.
“Johnson had no discussions with President Trump about the DOJ’s decision,” Johnson said. She noted that she recognized President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., but called on him to fully investigate the allegations of electoral fraud and to gain confidence in future elections.
Mr. Perry did not respond to comments. Mr. Trump went on to say he had won, but he was not allowed to stay directly at the White House.
Mr. Trump’s phone call may have been the boldest in a month-long campaign to register the Department of Justice in the Justice Department to overturn the election results.
It was announced on December 14 after the departure of Mr. Rosen’s predecessor, William P. Barr. College and Trump supporters stormed Capitol, according to e-mails and other documents obtained by Congress and interviews with former Trump administration officials.
The talks included complaints about voter fraud theories, the Department of Justice’s failure to ask the Justice Department to reject the election, and the department’s leaders’ inability to fight Trump enough, officials said.
The Department of Justice has issued a memorandum to the House Monitoring and Reform Committee, which is investigating the Trump administration’s efforts to overturn the election results.
Traditionally, the department has struggled to keep any accounts of private conversations between the president and his cabinet confidential, with officials in future administrations worried that their discussions would be made public later, so as not to give an example to honestly advise presidents.
But submitting the notes to Congress is part of allowing Mr. Trump to examine his efforts to overturn the election. The Binden Department of Justice told Rosen, Donohu, and other former officials this week that they could give unrestricted testimony to investigators and the Senate Judiciary Committees.
According to letters sent to former officials, congressional investigators are investigating possible errors in the presidency, which is unusual. The department concluded that executive power was intended to benefit the country, not the individual, and that Mr. Trump’s efforts to push his personal agenda would be inappropriate.
Caroline B. Maloney, a New York Democrat and House Speaker, said: Monitoring and Improvement Committee, in a statement.
Trump’s bid to reverse election
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- Monthly campaign. In the last days of his presidency, President Donald Trump and his allies have made strenuous efforts to weaken the election results. That campaign included election fraud, false and completely false claims, and the pursuit of aid from government officials.
- Voters’ baseless claims. Although Mr. Trump’s allegations of rigged elections have died in court, officials from both parties have denied allegations of fraud, and Republicans continue to spread conspiracy theories across the country. Those 147 Republicans voted before the election.
- Intervention in the Department of Justice. Dissatisfied with the rankings, Republicans and cabinet officials sought to find other ways to sell their baseless claims, as weeks since they stepped down. In an effort to advance his own agenda, Mr. Trump conspired to oust the incumbent Attorney General and pressured senior officials to declare the election corrupt. The chief of staff urged Mr. Trump to examine the theories of foreign and baseless conspiracies he thought were successful.
- Pressing on state officials to ‘get a vote’. In a taped call, Mr Trump warned Georgia’s foreign secretary to “get 11,780 votes” to cancel the presidential election and warned of “criminal misconduct.” There, he twice tried to talk to the leader of the Arizona Republican Party to reverse the narrow victory of Joseph R. Biden.
- Congress candidateTLiterally TShare on January 6th. The president’s rejection of the election, when his most loyal supporters convened in Congress on January 6, became a day of reckoning for Biden’s election victory. On that day, Mr. Trump gave a speech to thousands of his loyalists before he violently hit the Capitol.
Mr. Trump’s talks with Rosen and Donohu reflect a single mindset that focuses on reversing the election results. Mr. Trump once called voter fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona what he called “bad elections.” Mr. Donoghu pushed back.
“Most of the information you get is false,” Mr Donoghu said. “We look at the charges, but they do not change,” he said.
The department found that voting error in Michigan was 0.0063 percent, not the president’s 68 percent. In Pennsylvania, he found no evidence that a worker had interfered with ballot papers, and after examining a video and interviewing witnesses, he found no evidence of voter fraud in Fulton County, Ga.
Mr. Trump unwittingly ruined the department’s findings. “Okay – but what about the others?” Mr. Donohu wrote in his memorandum on the President’s comments. Mr. Donoghu asked Mr. Trump to go to Fulton County to verify the signatures on the ballot papers.
“It is corrupt to say that the election was not rigged,” Trump said, adding that action should be taken against the authorities. “Not Too Long”
On the other hand, Mr. Donoghu said the department could quickly verify or deny that more ballot papers were issued in Pennsylvania than voters.
In his memo, Mr. Donoghu said:
Officials told Trump they had no evidence to support the Department of Justice’s election results. “We are not based on evidence,” he said. We can only do so on the basis of factual evidence.
“Thousands of people have called their local attorneys’ offices to complain about the election, and” no one trusts the FBI, “Trump said.
“You people may not follow the Internet the way I do,” says the document.
Citing the acting head of the Department of Justice, Mr. Trump, in a moment of hatred, referred to the “Chief of Staff of the Department of Justice who encouraged them to intervene in the election.” . People want me to replace the DOJ leadership.
“You have to have the leadership you want,” Mr. Dono said. However, he acknowledged that the decision was not a signal of a formal antitrust inquiry into the allegations.
Mr. Donohu and Mr. Rosen were unaware that Mr. Perry had introduced Mr. Clarke to Mr. Trump. One week later, they were forced to fight Mr. Clark for his job at the Oval Office show.
During the call, Mr. Trump also told Justice Department officials to “think about what to do with Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.” “People are criticizing the DOJ if it is not really investigated,” he said, in violation of long-standing guidelines for criminal interference in White House interventions during criminal investigations or other law enforcement actions.
Two days after Trump’s phone call, Mr. Donohu held a meeting with Justice Department officials, including Trump’s general manager, Mark Medows; White House Adviser Pat Siplon; And White House Deputy Adviser Patrick Philbin. People in Italy met to discuss the concept of the Italian Gate, which proves that military technology in the United States was remotely used.
Justice Department officials told the White House that in the notes and at the meeting, someone was assigned to look into the matter. They did not mention that the department was looking to lighten the theory, the individual.
While Department of Justice officials kept the pressure campaign out of the public eye, emails received by Congress and interviews with former Trump administration officials focused on the Atlanta Sea, particularly the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, Baung J. Pack, however, saw that it was not enough to investigate allegations of voter fraud.
According to documents and interviews, Mr. Donghu resigned on January 4 after being informed of his concerns about the President’s conspiracy and Mr. Trump’s Atlanta.
Nicholas Fandos Contributed.