Justice to investigate if it helped Trump in bid to reverse election

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department watchdog announced Monday he had opened an investigation into whether any of his department’s officials tried to undo the results of the presidential election, as scrutiny of former President Donald Trump and his associates builds before his impeachment trial.

The investigation by the department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, followed efforts by Trump and a top federal law enforcement official, Jeffrey Clark, to push other Justice Department leaders to falsely assert that continuing fraud investigations cast doubt on the election results. As detailed by the New York Times in recent days, Trump was said to have considered installing Clark as acting attorney general to carry out the scheme.

“The inspector general is initiating an investigation into whether any former or current DOJ official engaged in an improper attempt to have DOJ seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” Horowitz said in a statement, adding that he was announcing the inquiry to reassure the public that the matter was being examined.

The inquiry adds to the increasing scrutiny on Trump’s attempts to wield the power of the Justice Department to advance his false claims about the election in the final weeks of his presidency. It follows another inspector general investigation into whether a federal prosecutor in Georgia was improperly pushed to help and a broader Democratic-led Senate inquiry into pressure on the department to aid Trump’s cause.

Trump sought repeatedly to compel the Justice Department to back his baseless claims of election irregularities, ultimately prompting the attorney general at the time, William Barr, to publicly state early last month that the department had found no voting fraud on a scale that would affect the election results. Barr fell out of favor with Trump over the issue and left his post within weeks.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and the Senate majority leader, had urged Horowitz over the weekend to open an investigation, saying it was “unconscionable that a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people’s will.”

The inspector general also noted that his inquiry would be limited to the Justice Department because other agencies did not fall within his purview, a nod to the array of people who sought during Trump’s final weeks in office to find a way to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

This month, Horowitz opened an investigation into whether Trump administration officials pressured Byung J. Pak, at the time the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, who abruptly resigned after it became clear to Trump that he would not take actions to cast doubt on or undo the results of the election, according to a person briefed on the inquiry.

Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee said this weekend that it had initiated its own oversight inquiry into officials including Clark, who was the head of the Justice Department’s environmental and natural resources division and the acting head of its civil division.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, sent a letter to the Justice Department saying he would investigate efforts by Trump and Clark to use the agency “to further Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

Durbin asked the acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, to preserve documents, emails and messages related to meetings between top Justice Department officials under Trump, the White House and Trump, as well as any communications related to Pak’s resignation.