Breaking

Trump Pressed Justice Dept. to Declare Election Results Corrupt, Notes Show - The New York Times
Jul 30, 2021 2 mins, 33 secs
“Leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, the former president is said to have told top law enforcement officials.

Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had 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 New York Times.

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.

Trump replied that he did not expect that, according to notes Mr.

“Congressman Jordan did not, has not, and would not pressure anyone at the Justice Department about the 2020 election,” said Russell Dye, a spokesman for Mr.

Johnson had “no conversations with President Trump about the D.O.J.

Trump won, but has not been tied directly to the White House effort to keep him in office.

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.

The Biden Justice Department also told Mr.

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.

“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” Representative Carolyn B.

Trump, according to the notes.

The department found that the error rate of ballot counting in Michigan was 0.0063 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.

Trump told the officials, adding that they needed to act.

The officials also told Mr.

Trump that the Justice Department had no evidence to support a lawsuit regarding the election results.

Trump said, according to the document.

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.

Trump also told the Justice Department officials to “figure out what to do” with Hunter Biden, Mr.

Donoghue took notes of a meeting between Justice Department officials: Mr

The Justice Department officials told the White House that they had assigned someone to look into the matter, according to the notes and a person briefed on the meeting

RECENT NEWS

SUBSCRIBE

Get monthly updates and free resources.

CONNECT WITH US

© Copyright 2024 365NEWSX - All RIGHTS RESERVED