"Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen."
President Donald Trump
In a December 27, 2020 telephone call, Trump urged his Justice Department to back up his assertions that there were widespread election irregularities.
Trump was talking to his Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, per the contemporaneous notes by Acting Deputy AG Richard Donoghue, who participated in the call. Jeffry Rosen pushed back. There had been multiple investigations and hundreds of interviews and there was no evidence of material fraud, he told Trump. The previous AG, William Barr, had said the same thing publicly.
"We are doing our job. Much of the info you're getting is false," Rosen told Trump, according to the notes.
Trump said he might replace Rosen with Jeff Clark, the former head of the Civil Division of the Justice Department. "People tell me you guys may not be following the internet the way I do," Trump said. "People tell me Jeff Clark is great, I should put him in."
On December 28 Jeffrey Clark circulated a draft letter to his superiors at the Justice Department. He proposed that Rosen and Donoghue co-sign the letter so that it would have the full imprimatur of the Department of Justice. The letter would be sent to the State of Georgia and be made public. It said that the Department of Justice found widespread election irregularities in Georgia and elsewhere, and that Georgia and other states could use that Justice Department statement as justification to overrule their own state statues and constitutions. They could simply award the electoral votes to Trump. He proposed the letter say,
The Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States. The Department will update you as we are able on investigatory progress, but at this time we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.” . . .
While the Department of Justice believe[s] the Governor of Georgia should immediately call a special session to consider this important and urgent matter, if he declines to do so, we share with you our view that the Georgia General Assembly has implied authority under the Constitution of the United States to call itself into special session for [t]he limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors.
The people chosen by Trump to lead the Justice Department would give cover to the states. Just say they had suspicions and were doing an investigation.
What stopped Trump from firing Rosen and Donoghue and installing the willing Jeffrey Clark? The threat of resignations by top members of the Justice Department. Had that not happened there could have been a stampede:
***The Justice Department says they are investigating problems.
***Since investigations are underway, then legislatures can claim they don't really know who won the election.
***If legislatures don't know who won, they have justification to ignore their own state statues and just declare whomever they choose to get the electoral votes, and they would be doing so with the support of the president and a majority of Republican voters.
***If Georgia's legislature overrules the election and awards the votes to Trump, then Republican legislatures in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania would be emboldened to do the same thing, urged on by Trump.
***Trump stays in office.
They didn't need facts on the ground. They needed people with the institutional authority of the Justice Department to fudge the truth and give political cover to state legislatures.
ABC News got copies of the draft letter from Jeffrey Clark, and the responses. Readers can see for themselves.
3 comments:
There is a name for this: corruption. Our Christian friends would call it "bearing false witness".
There is a precedent: Birtherism. The Republican party allowed this bald faced lie to take hold, and laid the groundwork for a bigger lie when they lost. It's nothing more than pandering to conspiracists. It's wishful thinking to hope the Republicans are redeemable.
Another way to say it is "liar, liar pants on fire".
I'm going with that.
This also seems to be an internal DOJ power play. From the NYT:
"Clark's alleged cooperation with Trump to remove Rosen and to use the Justice Department's power to alter Georgia's election results was met with surprise by many of Clark's friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, who had previously viewed him as an "establishment lawyer" rather than a part of the "Trumpist faction of the party."
Yes, Harvard alum breaks bad.
I would call Clark a whore but that just impugns the reputation of prostitutes.
Prostitutes at least deliver something for the money. Unlike Republicans.
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