It appears that a lawyer who works for the Department of Justice was in cahoots with Donald Trump, with the pair concocting a plan to both remove Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen and use the DOJ’s influence to make Georgia state lawmakers invalidate its presidential election results.
The New York Times reports that the lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, had been working alongside Trump to sow distrust into the election results and aid his legal fight to overturn the election. When Rosen had declined to help Trump accomplish his plans, the former president was reportedly mulling whether to replace Rosen with Clark.
However, when other department officials heard about this scenario, they all unanimously decided that they would resign. Their unofficial agreement pushed Trump to keep Rosen, since the then-sitting president believed that so many resignations would overshadow his false claims of voter fraud.
This was Trump’s last-ditch effort to remain in the White House. He also demanded that Rosen create special counsels that would investigate Dominion Voting Systems, which manufactures the election equipment that Trump alleged was flipping votes in favor of Biden.
Clark told The Times that this description of events wasn’t entirely accurate, and that he couldn’t reveal conversations he had with Trump or DOJ lawyers due to “the strictures of legal privilege.” He continued, “Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommonly, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties. All my official communications were consistent with law.” He also denied that he attempted to force Rosen out.
A Trump adviser said that the justice system should look into “rampant election fraud that has plagued our system for years.” The adviser also said that “any assertion to the contrary is false and being driven by those who wish to keep the system broken.” Clark agreed, saying that “legal privileges” disallowed him from sharing details about the conversation.
Sources also told the Wall Street Journal that Trump had also tried to get the nation's highest court to overturn Biden's Electoral College victory. "People familiar with matter" told the outlet that the former president had pressured the DOJ "to ask the Supreme Court to invalidate" the election results; however, department officials like Rosen, former Attorney General William Barr, and former acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall allegedly declined to file the case because it had no legal basis.
"He wanted us, the United States, to sue one or more of the states directly in the Supreme Court," a former administration official told WSJ, claiming Trump became increasingly insistent after courts rejected his challenge of Biden's win. "The pressure got really intense."
