Former U.S. President Donald Trump exerted significant pressure on the Justice Department at the end of last year to support his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, urging the acting attorney general to announce that the election was "tainted by corruption," according to documents released on Friday.
According to a written account of a conversation he had with acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, Trump asked him, "Just say the election was tainted by corruption and leave the rest to me." Rosen responded to Trump during their conversation on December 27, 2020, that the department had examined his claims regarding voter fraud and found no evidence.
According to notes recorded by Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, Rosen told Trump that "the Department of Justice cannot... change the election results; things don't work that way." However, Trump was keen to change the results of the November election, which Joe Biden won. Trump stated, "We are obligated to tell the people that the election was illegitimate and tainted by corruption."
On Friday, the House Oversight Committee released documented pressure that Trump exerted on the Justice Department, which was followed a week later by an assault on Congress by his supporters in an attempt to halt the certification of election results. The committee is investigating unprecedented efforts by Trump to overturn the election results in his favor.
Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney stated in a statement that "these written reports show that President Trump gave direct instructions to the highest law enforcement agency in our country to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency." Days before his conversation with Rosen, Trump had dismissed Attorney General William Barr for refusing to support the former real estate mogul’s claims of election fraud.
In an interview, Barr revealed that he told Trump in early December that the fraud allegations were mere "nonsense." The Washington Post reported Thursday that Trump contacted Rosen after Barr was replaced, "almost daily" to pressure him into pursuing the fraud allegations.
