The committee said that Trump pressured the Justice Department to support his bogus claims.
Washington:
Lawmakers investigating last year’s attack on the US Capitol on Thursday outlined Donald Trump’s “brazen” attempts to recruit the Justice Department into a plan to overturn his failed election. elected in 2020 before Joe Biden.
At Thursday’s hearing in the year-long investigation into the uprising, the House panel detailed Trump’s pressure on officials as part of his campaign to assert wrongly assumed that his presidency was stolen by rampant voter fraud.
“Donald Trump doesn’t just want the Justice Department to investigate. He wants the Justice Department to help legitimize his lies, calling the election unfounded corruption,” said committee chair Bennie Thompson. speak.
Lawmakers revisited tensions between government attorneys general over the weekend before the January 6, 2021 uprising, when Trump tried to install his man at the head of the department.
“It’s a brazen attempt to use the Department of Justice to advance the President’s personal political agenda,” Thompson said.
The committee heard from Jeffrey Rosen, who became acting attorney general after Bill Barr’s resignation, and quickly found itself at the center of Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in the election. nominate.
Emphasizing the intensity of Trump’s pressure on the department, Rosen said that in late December 2020 and early January 2021, the president communicated with him almost daily.
“At one point, he raised the question of a special election fraud attorney. At some point, he asked me to meet his campaign adviser, Mr. (Rudy) Giuliani,” Rosen said. .
“At one point, he raised whether the Justice Department would file a lawsuit with the Supreme Court. At some point, there were questions about whether to make a public statement or about holding one. news conference.”
The DOJ pursued a series of allegations of election fraud by Trump, but Rosen said officials were not presented with evidence.
At that point, Trump began promoting a little-known mid-level official named Jeffrey Clark, who accepted the outgoing president’s debunked theories.
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Clark prepared a letter to the Georgia Congress, the hearing was announced, saying the department had found evidence of widespread voter fraud but other officials refused to sign it. Other letters have also been prepared for other states.
Trump’s White House attorney, Eric Herschmann, told the committee in a deposed video that he informed Clark that his plan would “commit a felony”.
Trump considered installing Clark as attorney general in lieu of Rosen, and asked Clark to reverse the department’s conclusion that there was no evidence of fraud that could have influenced the election.
But Trump was forced to back down by a mutiny among senior department officials at a January 4 meeting in the Oval Office detailed by witnesses.
Rosen, Richard Donoghue’s deputy, another senior official named Steven Engel and White House adviser Pat Cipollone have threatened mass resignations, warning that they would bring a team of federal prosecutors with them. leading, if Trump goes ahead with his plan.
“I’ve made the point that Jeff Clark is not even qualified to be attorney general. He’s never been a criminal attorney. He’s never conducted a criminal investigation in his life.” Donoghue told Trump.
Donoghue said he told Clark: “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill?”
During direct questioning, Donoghue confirmed that he rejected Trump when the then-president insisted the department could simply “say the election was corrupt” and “leave the rest to me.”
In a headline coda about the incident, federal investigators searched Clark’s home on Wednesday.
The US attorney in Washington did not comment on the reasons for the action but the Center for American Innovation, where Clark works, confirmed the search, calling it a “weaponization of the government.”
Adding to the film, Hollywood actor Sean Penn was at Thursday’s hearing as a guest of former cop Michael Fanone, who was seriously injured on January 6 and testified last year. about your challenge.
“I’m just here to observe, just another citizen.” Penn told reporters, adding that he had followed the hearings.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
