• Trump urged DOJ officials to declare election ‘corrupt’,
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump urged senior Justice Department officials to declare the results of the 2020 election “corrupt” in a December phone call, according to handwritten notes from one of the participants inthe conversation.
“Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” Mr. Trump said at one point to then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, according to notes taken by Richard Donoghue, who was then Mr. Rosen’s deputy and who was also on the call.
The notes of the Dec. 27 call, released Friday by the House Oversight Committee, underscore the lengths to which Mr. Trump went to try to overturn the results of the election and to elicit the support of senior government officials in that effort. Emails released last month show Trump and his allies in the last weeks of his presidency pressured the Justice Department to investigate unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud, forwarding them conspiracy theories and even a draft legal brief they hoped would be filedwith the Supreme Court.
The pressure is all the more notable because just weeks earlier, Mr. Trump’s own attorney general William Barr, revealed that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have overturned the results. Unsubstantiated claims of fraud have been repeatedly rejected by judge after judge, including by Trump appointees, and by election officials acrossthe country.
“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,” committee chairman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, said in astatement.
She said the committee had begun scheduling interviews with witnesses as part of its investigation into Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the results. The Justice Department earlier this week authorized six witnesses, including Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue, to appear before the panel and provide “unrestricted testimony,” citing the public interest in the “extraordinary events” of those finalweeks.
The Dec. 27 call took place just days after Mr. Barr had resigned, leaving Mr. Rosen in charge of the department during a turbulent final weeks of the administration that also included the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in which pro-Trump loyalists stormed the building as Congress was gathered to certify the election results.
During the call, according to the notes, Mr. Trump complained that people were “angry” and blaming the Justice Department for “inaction” and said that “We have an obligation to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election.” He claimed the department had failed to respond to legitimate complaints and reportsof election-related crime.