Trump to DOJ last December: 'Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me'
By Jeremy Herb
Former President Donald Trump pressured his incoming acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to declare that the election was corrupt in an attempt to help Republican members of Congress try to overturn the election result, according to notes of a December 2020 call Trump held with Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue.
Donoghue provided the House Oversight Committee with his contemporaneous notes from the December 27 call Trump held with Rosen and Donoghue, who took over the top spots at DOJ in the final weeks of Trump's presidency following the resignation of Attorney General William Barr.
During the call, Trump pressured Rosen and Donoghue to falsely declare the election "illegal" and "corrupt" even after the Justice Department had not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud.
"Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen," Trump said on the call, according to Donoghue's notes.
The notes are the latest evidence of Trump's efforts to pressure the Justice Department to try to support his false claims of election fraud as he tried to overturn his November loss to Joe Biden. Those efforts are now the subject of a new House select committee that's investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol carried out by pro-Trump supporters to try to stop the certification of Biden's election win, in addition to the investigation into Trump's election fraud claims by the House Oversight Committee.
"These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation's top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency," House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said in a statement.
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