The New York Times on Friday published a bombshell report revealing that former President Trump sought to oust his acting attorney general in a bid to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia.
The former President reportedly planned to replace then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer at the Justice Department, in an effort to apply pressure to Georgia politicians to overturn the results of the race there. Rosen had refused to back Trump’s disputed claims that voter fraud had cost him the election, drawing the president’s ire.
Trump had also pressed Rosen to appoint special counsels to investigate what he said were irregularities in the election, though he never provided any evidence for his claims. Among the investigations he wanted launched was one into Dominion Voting Systems, a company that made the election equipment Trump’s backers falsely said had ties with late Venezuela President Hugo Chavez to prevent Trump’s reelection.
The plot failed after a group of Department of Justice (DOJ) officials uncovered the plan and threatened to resign en masse if Trump and Clark followed through with it. Rosen stayed in his position for the remainder of the administration.
From The New York Times:
“The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed? The answer was unanimous. They would resign.
Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.”
The Times’s report was based on four former Trump administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
