In the final weeks of his presidency, former President Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of the state elections in Georgia, pressing the authorities to “find” votes for him. And according to a new report from the New York Times, Trump’s efforts extended further: he also contemplated replacing the United States attorney general with one who sympathized with his efforts to force a change in Georgia’s results.
Katie Benner of The Times reports that Trump and Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer in charge of the civil division, devised a plan that would have made the Justice Department work to improperly hold Trump in place, replacing incumbent attorney general Jeffrey Rosen – who refused to agree with Trump’s attempts to undermine election results – with Clark.
A wave of DOJ officials, informed of the plan via teleconference on January 3, threatened to resign if it did, according to the Times report. This threat, along with a contentious meeting between Rosen, Clark and Trump at which each DOJ officer presented his case to the president, allegedly dissuaded Trump from replacing Rosen in the end.
But if the effort had gone ahead, the Justice Department probably would have been involved in the effort to overturn the election, giving it legitimacy and legal support that it failed to obtain after the failure of dozens of lawsuits that falsely alleged electoral irregularities.
A former Justice Department official called the effort to replace Rosen “an attempted coup in the Department of Justice – fomented by the President of the United States” in Twitter Friday.
Clark, for his part, denied that there was any plan to fire Rosen and told the Times that he just advised the president.
“My practice is to rely on sworn depositions to assess disputed factual claims,” he said. “There was a frank discussion of options and pros and cons with the president. It is a pity that those who were part of a privileged legal conversation commented publicly on such internal deliberations, while distorting any discussions. “
Changing the DOJ leadership would have been one of Trump’s last attempts to overturn the election. In addition to his unsuccessful legal challenges in battlefield states, Trump had also previously tried to harness the power of the DOJ by asking Rosen to investigate Dominion Voting Systems, a company that makes voting equipment and software, and has been the subject of false claims. allegations of adulterous voting. The former president also asked the Justice Department to support his campaign’s state lawsuits, but was denied.
Trump even asked Rosen to appoint special councils to conduct investigations into refuted allegations of electoral fraud, which Rosen refused to do. Rosen affirmed the conclusions of his predecessor, former attorney general William Barr, that allegations of widespread electoral fraud were not supported by evidence.
And in one of the most shocking and shameless efforts, Trump called Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to ask him to “find” enough votes to overturn President Joe Biden’s narrow margin of victory, even after it was confirmed through two recounts. That call allegedly occurred on the same day that Trump had the newly discovered conversations with DOJ officials.
These efforts culminated in a rally in Washington, DC on January 6, during which Trump repeated his false allegations of irregularities in the election – and during which he incited a crowd that later invaded the U.S. Capitol, leading to the his second impeachment.
Trump faces an impeachment trial because of his efforts to overturn the election
Trump was impeached on January 13 in the House for alleged “incitement to insurrection”. The impeachment article also argues that Trump “betrayed his confidence as president” by trying to coerce officials into supporting his efforts to overturn the election, as he allegedly did with Rosen. If he is found guilty of these crimes in the Senate, Trump could be prevented from taking public office again.
On Friday, Senate leaders finally reached an agreement to start the trial on February 9. This happened after the debate over the start time – with Democrats concerned that the start of the trial would immediately delay the confirmations of many of Biden’s nominees, and Republicans wanting Trump to have a long period of time to prepare his defense.
The House will deliver the article to the Senate on Monday, and the senators will take office as jurors on Tuesday, but the oral arguments will not begin on February 9 and the leaders have signaled that they hope to reach a verdict by the end of the week. .
By delaying the start by two weeks, the Biden administration will be able to prioritize the relief of Covid-19 and confirm the positions in the Cabinet, Schumer said on Friday. And a McConnell spokesman said the delay gave Trump due process.
Trump began to assemble his defense team. His longtime lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led Trump’s failed attempts to overturn the election results in the courts, will not participate in this; last week he said he cannot act as a lawyer because he was a witness to the January 6 rally.
Instead, South Carolina attorney Karl “Butch” Bowers, Jr., will head Trump’s legal team. Bowers works for a small company in Columbia, South Carolina, and has been described as a more restrained figure than the bombastic Giuliani. Bowers had already successfully defended former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford at his own impeachment hearing in 2009 after the Sanford extramarital affair came up.