Lawmakers investigating the uprising against the United States Capitol Trump’s “brazen” efforts to turn the Justice Department into his “personal” law firm were exposed on Thursday. in order to annul the elections in which he was defeated by Joe Biden.
(Also read: Why will they pause hearings against Trump for storming the Capitol?)
In the fifth hearing of its year-long investigation into the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riots, the House panel detailed Trump’s pressure on officials as part of his campaign to falsely claim the presidency was stolen from him through widespread electoral fraud.
“Donald Trump not only wanted the Justice Department to investigate, he wanted it to help him legitimize his lies, to unsubstantiately call the election corrupt,” committee chairman Bennie Thompson said.
Donald Trump didn’t just want the Justice Department to investigate, he wanted it to help him legitimize his lies.
Lawmakers reviewed tensions between government lawyers the weekend before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, when Trump tried to put one of his men at the top of the department.
“It was a brazen attempt to use the Justice Department to advance the president’s personal political agenda,” Thompson said.
The committee heard from Jeffrey Rosen, who became attorney general after Bill Barr resigned, and who quickly found himself at the center of Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in the election.
(Also: Trump: How Nixon’s Assault on Capitol Hill and Nixon’s Watergate Are Alike?)
highlighting the Trump’s intense pressure on the departmentRosen said the president contacted him almost daily from the end of December 2020 and the beginning of January 2021.
“On one occasion, he raised the possibility of having special legal counsel for voter fraud. On other occasions, he suggested that I meet with his campaign manager, Mr. (Rudy) Giuliani,” Rosen said.
“At another point, he raised whether the Justice Department would sue in the Supreme Court. At a couple of junctures, there were questions about making public statements or holding press conferences.”
The Justice Department received a flood of fraud allegations, but Rosen said they did not present evidence to officials.
At that point, Trump initiated the rise of a little-known mid-level department official named Jeffrey Clark, who did embrace the outgoing president’s theories.
(Keep reading: Trump and the false ghost of electoral fraud mark the Republican agenda)
Showdown in the Oval Office
During the hearing, it was discussed that Clark prepared a letter to the Georgia State Assembly stating that the department had found evidence of widespread voter fraud, but other officials refused to sign it. Other letters addressed to other states were also prepared.
Trump’s White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann, told the committee through video testimony that he informed Clark that his plan would amount to “committing a crime.”
Trump was considering installing Clark as attorney general to replace Rosen and thus get him to reverse the official conclusion that there was no evidence of fraud, allowing him to flip the election.
But Trump was forced to back down from his attempt by a rebellion among the department’s leadership, in a meeting on January 4 in the Oval Office of the White House that was described in detail by witnesses.
Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, another high-ranking official named Steven Engel and White House counsel Pat Cipollone threatened to resign en masse, warning they would take federal prosecutors with them if Trump went ahead with his plan.
(In other news: Donald Trump lashes out at the committee investigating the assault on Capitol Hill)
Significant new streams of evidence have necessitated a change in the hearing schedule
“I pointed out that Jeff Clark is not even competent to serve as attorney general. He has never been a criminal defense attorney. He has never led a criminal investigation in his life,” Donoghue recalled what he told Trump.
Donoghue said he told Clark, “You’re an environmental lawyer. Why don’t you go back to your office and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill?”
In the middle of the live questioning, Donoghue confirmed that he repelled Trump when the then-president insisted that the department could simply “say the election was tainted,” and “leave the rest to me.”
In addition to this episode that steals the headlines of the media, this Wednesday federal investigators raided Clark’s home.
The US attorney in Washington did not comment on the reasons for the search, but the Center for Renewing America, where Clarks works, confirmed the raid, calling it a “weaponization of the government.”
To add to the spectacle, Hollywood actor Sean Penn was seen at Thursday’s hearing as a guest of former police officer Michael Fanone, who was seriously injured in the Capitol storming that left five dead and testified last year.
(Also: The evidence weighing on Trump in ‘coup attempt’ in the US)
“I’m just here to observe, just like any other citizen,” Penn told reporters.
Thompson told reporters that “significant new streams of evidence have necessitated a change in the panel’s hearing schedule, including the possibility of additional hearings“.
The new evidence includes footage from documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who had access to Trump and his family before and after January 6.
AFP
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