Former president Donald Trump tried to pressure the Department of Justice in the US to legitimise his lies and call the election he lost “corrupt”, a congressional committee in Washington has heard.
A former senior official in the department testified on Thursday that in one conversation Mr Trump urged him to “just say the election was corrupt and to leave the rest to me and Republican congressmen”.
The chairman of the committee investigating the riots on Capitol Hill on January 6th last year, Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, said Mr Trump wanted the justice department to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of fraud.
He said Mr Trump wanted the department of justice to send a letter to the legislatures in six key states urging them to consider altering the election results.
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Mr Thompson said when these efforts failed Mr Trump had sought to replace Jeffrey Rosen, the man he had a few weeks earlier appointed as acting attorney general, with a lawyer who he believed would “inappropriately put the full weight of the justice department behind the efforts to overturn the election”.
The vice-chairwoman of the committee, Liz Cheney, a republican from Wyoming, pointed to a draft letter that was written by a lawyer in the department, Jeff Clark, and another lawyer, Ken Klukowski, which was to be sent to officials in Georgia saying falsely that the justice department was worried about the results in that state.
She said neither Mr Clark or Mr Klukowski “had any evidence of widespread election fraud but they were quite aware of what Mr Trump wanted the department to do”.
“Jeff Clark met privately with Mr Trump and others in the White House and agreed to assist the president without telling the senior leadership of the department who oversaw him.”
She said the letter claimed the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted on the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia”.
Ms Cheney said in fact Mr Trump knew that this was a lie. She said the department had already told him repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud that was sufficiently widespread to overturn the election result.
Ms Cheney said had the letter been released on department of justice notepaper “it would have falsely informed all Americans that Mr Trump’s fraud allegations were likely to be very real”.
The former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue said towards the end of December 2020, President Trump’s entreaties about the election became “more urgent” and that he had “an arsenal of allegations”. He said he had gone “piece by piece” through these series of allegations and told him they were not true.
Mr Donoghue said none of the allegations raised by Mr Trump were “credible”. He said in one conversation Mr Trump urged that the Department of Justice “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the republican congressmen”.
Mr Rosen told the hearing that he had warned Mr Clark that if his proposed letter had been sent out to state legislatures regarding alleged fraud, it would represent the department of justice meddling in an election. He said it could have spiraled into a constitutional crisis.
However, he said Mr Clark continued to pursue the issue and conducted his own investigation and contacted witnesses.
Mr Rosen said that in early January 2021 Mr Clark had told him the president was going to appoint him as acting attorney general.
Mr Rosen said he was not going to accept being fired by one of his subordinates and contacted the White House and his own management team about the issue.
The committee heard that on January 3rd the White House logs for the afternoon on that day referred to Mr Clark as the acting attorney general.
Mr Rosen and Mr Donoghue gave evidence of a showdown at the White House as they warned the president that the top leadership of the department of justice would resign rather than serve under Mr Clark.
Mr Donoghue said Mr Clark had never tried a case and was not competent to lead the department of justice.
He said within a day or two, so many senior department of justice officials would have resigned that Mr Clark would have been left with a “graveyard”
He said the president had asked “what do I have to lose” by appointing Mr Clark.
Mr Rosen said Mr Trump had criticised him as he wasn’t “going to do anything” about his claims of fraud.
“This other guy at least might do something,” Trump said of Mr Clark.
“I said, ‘Well, Mr President, you’re right that I’m not going to allow the justice department to do anything to try to overturn the election.’
“That’s true, but the reason for that is because that’s what’s consistent with the acts and the law. "
The committee also maintained that in the dying days of the Trump presidency a number of Republican politicians who had backed his claims about election fraud had sought official pardons.
Former White House aides testified that members of congress including Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania had sought presidential pardons.
Separately, on Thursday it emerged that US federal agents had raided the home of Mr Clark as part of an overall investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The search at Mr Clark’s home also came as a federal grand jury continued to issue subpoenas to people in four different states who were involved in a plan by Mr Trump and his allies to subvert the normal workings of the electoral process by creating fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states that were actually won by his rival Joe Biden.
