Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certification

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Another Republican Telling The Truth Becomes The Target Of Trump: The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta discusses his profile of Michigan State Senator Ed McBroom who debunked claims of voter fraud in his state, and how that has drawn the ire of the former president.
MSNBC
Jul 2, 2021

-- REPORT ON THE NOVEMBER 2020 ELECTION IN MICHIGAN, by COMMITTEE MEMBERS Senator Edward McBroom – Chair Senator Lana Theis – Majority Vice Chair Senator Jeff Irwin – Minority Vice Chair Senator John Bizon, 6/23/21

It was 12 hours, or 15 hours, after McBroom’s report was published that Trump put out a press release publishing McBroom’s phone number, and accusing him of a “cover-up”. Those were his words.



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Trump Calls McBroom's Michigan Election Report a 'Cover Up,' Asks Supporters to Call His Office
by Zoe Kalen Hill
Newsweek
6/24/21 AT 3:16 PM EDT

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Former President Donald Trump called Michigan State Senate's election investigation a "cover up" concerning the 2020 presidential election, and urged his supporters to contact two state senators and have them "do the right thing."

Since last November's contest, Trump continues to allege that fraud took place in the election that saw Joe Biden win, even though there has been no evidence to corroborate such a claim. Biden took Michigan with 16 electoral votes.

Trump's Save America PAC sent out an email with a statement from the former president. In the message, Trump called out two Republican Michigan state senators: Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Ed McBroom.

"Michigan State Senators Mike Shirkey and Ed McBroom are doing everything possible to stop voter audits in order to hide the truth about November 3rd," Trump's statement began.

"The Senate 'investigation' of the election is a cover up, and a method of getting out of a Forensic Audit for the examination of the Presidential contest."

Trump referenced Michigan's Senate Oversight Committee report on the November 2020 general election, which was released Wednesday night, in his statement. He implied that the report's findings warranted a forensic audit.

"Instead of doing a Forensic Audit, they want to investigate the Patriots who have fought for the truth and who are exposing a very possibly Rigged Election. The truth will come out and RINO's will pay at the polls, especially with primary voters and expected challenges," he wrote.

In the statement, Trump also referred to the city of Detroit as the "most corrupt election city in the U.S.," and alleged that "corrupt" politicians are wrong in saying Michigan had no voter fraud.

McBroom, who lead the investigation into the 2020 election, said that the committee investigated every major concern including dead people voting and issues with a voting center in Detroit.

"People are, understandably, confused by recent changes to election laws, as well as by practices, orders and determinations made by state and local governments in response to the pandemic. They are right to demand answers and deserve nothing less than the truth amidst so much shouting and misrepresentation from both sides of the political spectrum," McBroom said in a statement about the report.

"This investigation was lengthy, thorough, and revealing. We found both real vulnerabilities and resiliency within the state's elections system. We also discovered the extent to which our elections officials go to facilitate them," he also said.

"After innumerable hours over many months, watching, listening, and reading both in-person testimony and various other accounts, I am confident in asserting that the results of the November 2020 General Election in Michigan were accurately represented by the certified and audited results."

Meanwhile, the former president called on his supporters to take action and listed the apparent office numbers for both senators at the end of the released statement.

"Our County was based on free and fair elections and that's what we must have!" Trump concluded. "Call those two senators now and get them to do the right thing, or vote them the hell out of office.

Newsweek reached out to McBroom and Shirkey for comment.

[admin]

Why the Trump Org Criminal Charges May Open the Indictment Flood Gates: A Matter of Precedent
by Glenn Kirschner
Jul 6, 2021

Other countries prosecute their criminal leaders - Presidents, Prime Ministers, etc. For example, France, South Korea, South Africa and Italy have all prosecuted former leaders for crimes they committed while in office. However, in the United States there is no precedent for prosecuting a criminal former president.

Prosecutors generally don't like to take maiden legal voyages, that is, bring a case that is unprecedented. Prosecutors like to have legal precedent as a blueprint. They like to have the comfort and cover of being able to point to an appellate court opinion - legal precedent - and say, "this has been done before, so I am not breaking new legal ground."

However, logic and common sense dictate that, if you require precedent to indict a criminal former president then we could NEVER charge a criminal former president. Indeed, the way prosecutors create precedent is by doing something for the first time.

The real question is - is there anything prohibiting the prosecution of a former president for crimes he committed while in office. The answer is a definitive NO - there is no law, no statute, no appellate court opinion and no Supreme Court precedent prohibiting the prosecution of a former president.

This video discusses prosecutorial considerations in taking a maiden legal voyage - brining a novel case for which there is no legal precedent and relates example of when such novel legal cases have been brought in the courts of Washington, DC.

[admin]

No. 45 Offers Nothing New At Rambling Ohio Rally
by Stephen Colbert
The Late Show
Jun 28, 2021

Even some of his most fervent supporters changed the channel during the former president's speech last weekend, finding little new content amid his litany of old punchlines and complaints. #Colbert #Comedy #Monologue

[admin]

Giuliani Urged Trump To 'Just Say We Won' On Election Night, Book Claims
by MSNBC
Jul 14, 2021

The new book 'I Alone Can Fix It', in part, details former President Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani on the election night of 2020 urging Trump to declare victory over Joe Biden ahead of the polls. The Morning Joe panel discusses.



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Rudy Giuliani urged Donald Trump to falsely claim election victory, new book says
by ABC.net.au
7/14/21

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Mr Giuliani reportedly encouraged Mr Trump to declare victory despite the vote count.(Reuters: Jonathan Ernst/File photo)

As Donald Trump's hopes for a second term as US president began to fade on election night 2020, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani repeatedly urged him to simply declare himself the winner, a new book claims.

Key points:

* Rudy Giuliani reportedly advised Donald Trump claim he was winning despite the vote going in Joe Biden's favour

* Mr Trump's advisers, the book says, tried to shoot down the suggestion in private

* On Monday Mr Giuliani claimed without evidence antifa was behind the shooting of a US Capitol rioter

An excerpt from the book I Alone Can Fix It published by the Washington Post describes in detail the chaotic, angry scenes at the White House as the election results began to go current US president Joe Biden's way.

Mr Giuliani, who at the time was Mr Trump's personal lawyer, initially outlined the "strategy" to the then-president's advisers, Bill Stepien, Mark Meadows and Jason Miller.

A viewing party was underway at the White House and "some people thought Giuliani may have been drinking too much".

The advisers took Mr Giuliani and they went through each of the key battleground states, which at that point were too early to call.

“Just say we won,” Mr Giuliani said about each.

"Giuliani’s grand plan was to just say Trump won, state after state, based on nothing. Stepien, Miller and Meadows thought his argument was both incoherent and irresponsible," according to the book.


Mr Trump's advisers reportedly said it was difficult to rein in Mr Trump's impulses when Mr Giuliani was telling him what he wanted to hear.(Reuters: Mike Segar)

“We can’t do that,” Mr Meadows reportedly said, raising his voice.

Later, when Fox News dramatically and unexpectedly called hotly contested Arizona for Mr Biden, Mr Trump became incensed.

“What the f--- is Fox doing?” Trump screamed. Then he barked orders to [Jared] Kushner: “Call Rupert! Call James and Lachlan!” And to Jason Miller: “Get Sammon. Get Hemmer. They’ve got to reverse this.” The president was referring to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan, as well as Bill Sammon, a top news executive at Fox.

Trump’s tirade continued. “What the f---?” he bellowed. “What the f--- are these guys doing? How could they call this this early?”

At this point Mr Giuliani stepped in to spruik his strategy and urged Mr Trump to ignore the Arizona call.

“Just go declare victory right now,” Giuliani told Trump. “You’ve got to go declare victory now.”

The suggestion infuriated Mr Trump's advisers, who had already shot it down in private.

One of the advisers recalled that it was difficult to be the "responsible parent" in the room when there was a "cool uncle around taking the kid to the movies and driving him around in a Corvette", referring to Mr Trump as the child.

By this point, the authors say, Mr Trump was already claiming "something nefarious was at play" as the election continued to slip away.

"They’re stealing this from us," Mr Trump reportedly said.

"We have this thing won. I won in a landslide and they’re taking it back."

About 2:00am, he spoke at the viewing party, falsely claiming to have won states such as Georgia and North Carolina that were at that point too close to call, and to be winning others such as Michigan and Wisconsin where he was behind.

“This is a fraud on the American public,” Mr Trump reportedly said.

"This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election."

Giuliani in hot water


Mr Giuliani speaks to media outside his apartment building after the suspension of his law licence in New York City.(Reuters: Andrew Kelly)

Last month, Mr Giuliani had his law licence suspended by a New York Appeals Court because he made false statements while trying to get courts to overturn Mr Trump's loss in the presidential race.

Last week, a District of Columbia Court of Appeals suspended his licence pending the disposition of his New York suspension, though his licence in Washington was already inactive.

Undeterred, Mr Giuliani on Monday gave an interview to Newsmax, a right-wing US news channel, in which he asserted without evidence that the police shooting of Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt on January 6 was a "completely phony operation" and part of a "plot" by antifa.

ABC/AP

[admin]

The FBI Allegedly Used At Least 12 Informants In The Michigan Kidnapping Case: Defense attorneys said they will argue that the FBI “induced or persuaded” the defendants to go along with the violent scheme.
by Jessica Garrison and Ken Bensinger
BuzzFeed
July 12, 2021

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Toward capturing the votes of the center bloc the first step is to identify and count the members. That done, everything else depends on where they are to sit. The best technique is to detail off known and stalwart supporters to enter into conversation with named middle-bloc types before the meeting actually begins. In this preliminary chat the stalwarts will carefully avoid mentioning the main subject of debate. They will be trained to use the opening gambits listed below, corresponding to the categories a to f, into which the middle bloc naturally falls:

a. "Waste of time, I call it, producing all these documents. I have thrown most of mine away."

b. "I expect we shall be dazzled by eloquence before long. I often wish people would talk less and come to the point. They are too clever by half, if you ask me."

c. "The acoustics of this hall are simply terrible. You would have thought these scientific chaps could do something about it. For half the time I CAN'T HEAR WHAT IS BEING SAID. CAN YOU?"

d. "What a rotten place to meet! I think there is something the matter with the ventilation. It makes me feel almost unwell. What about you?"

e. "My goodness, I don't know how you do it! Tell me the secret. Is it what you have for breakfast?"

f. "There's so much to be said on both sides of the 18 question that I really don't know which side to support. What do you feel about it?"

If these gambits are correctly played, each stalwart will start a lively conversation, in the midst of which he will steer his middle-blocsman toward the forum. As he does this, another stalwart will place himself just ahead of the pair and moving in the same direction. The drill is best illustrated by a concrete example. We will suppose that stalwart X (Mr. Sturdy) is steering middle-blocsman Y (Mr. Waverley, type f) toward a seat near the front. Ahead goes stalwart Z (Mr. Staunch), who presently takes a seat without appearing to notice the two men following him. Staunch turns in the opposite direction and waves to someone in the distance. Then he leans over to make a few remarks to the man in front of him. Only when Waverley has sat down will Staunch presently turn toward him and say, "My dear fellow--how nice to see you!" Only some minutes later again will he catch sight of Sturdy and start visibly with surprise. "Hallo, Sturdy--I didn't think you would be here!" "I've recovered now," replies Sturdy. "It was only a chill." The seating order is thus made to appear completely accidental, casual, and friendly. That completes Phase I of the operation, and it would be much the same whatever the exact category in which the middle-blocsman is believed to fall.

Phase II has to be adjusted according to the character of the man to be influenced. In the case of Waverley (Type f) the object in Phase II is to avoid any discussion of the matter at issue but to produce the impression that the thing is already decided. Seated near the front, Waverley will be unable to see much of the other members and can be given the impression that they practically all think alike.

"Really," says Sturdy, "I don't know why I bothered to come. I gather that Item Four is pretty well agreed. All the fellows I meet seem to have made up their minds to vote for it." (Or against it, as the case may be.)

"Curious," says Staunch. "I was just going to say the same thing. The issue hardly seems to be in doubt."

"I had not really made up my own mind," says Sturdy. 20 "There was much to be said on either side. But opposition would really be a waste of time. What do you think, Waverley?"

"Well," says Waverley, "I must admit that I find the question rather baffling. On the one hand, there is good reason to agree to the motion ... As against that ... Do you think it will pass?"

"My dear Waverley, I would trust your judgment in this. You were saying just now that it is already agreed."

"Oh, was I? Well, there does seem to be a majority. ... Or perhaps I should say ..."

"Thank you, Waverley," says Staunch, "for your opinion. I think just the same but am particularly interested to find you agree with me. There is no one whose opinion I value more."

Sturdy, meanwhile, is leaning over to talk to someone in the row behind. What he actually says, in a low voice, is this, "How is your wife now? Is she out of hospital?" When he turns back again, however, it is to announce that the people behind all think the same. The motion is as good as passed. And so it is if the drill goes according to plan.

While the other side has been busy preparing speeches and phrasing amendments, the side with the superior technique will have concentrated on pinning each middle-blocsman between two reliable supporters. When the crucial moment comes, the raising of a hand on either side will practically compel the waverer to follow suit. Should he be actually asleep, as often happens with middle-blocsman in categories d and e, his hand will be raised for him by the member on his right. This rule is merely to obviate both his hands being raised, a gesture that has been known to attract unfavorable comment. With the middle bloc thus secured, the motion will be carried with a comfortable margin; or else rejected, if that is thought preferable. In nearly every matter of controversy to be decided by the will of the people, we can assume that the people who will decide are members of the middle bloc. Delivery of speeches is therefore a waste of time. The one party will never agree and the other party has agreed already. Remains the middle bloc, the members of which divide into those who cannot hear what is being said and those who would not understand it even if they did. To secure their votes what is needed is primarily the example of others voting on either side of them. Their votes can thus be swayed by accident. How much better, by contrast, to sway them by design!

-- Parkinson's Law and Other Studies in Administration, by C. Northcote Parkinson

Members of the armed extremist group Wolverine Watchmen inside the Michigan Capitol in April 2020. Seth Herald / Reuters

The government employed at least a dozen confidential informants to infiltrate groups of armed extremists who allegedly plotted to kidnap the governor of Michigan, according to a new filing in federal court on Monday.

The filing, made by one of the five defendants in the federal case, asked that prosecutors be ordered to share more information about those informants, their relationship with the FBI, and the specific roles they played in building the case. It came among a blizzard of 15 new defense motions in the high-profile case, including requests to move it to a different district, to suppress evidence from a search warrant, and to try at least one defendant separately from the others.

Taken together, the new court papers offered a glimpse of the evolving defense strategies in the case, with several attorneys saying that they plan to argue that the FBI “induced or persuaded” the men to go along with the scheme.

The alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made international headlines last October, when the Department of Justice announced it had charged six men in a kidnapping conspiracy. Five of the defendants — Barry Croft, Adam Fox, Daniel Harris, Kaleb Franks, and Brandon Caserta — have all pleaded not guilty and have been held without bail since their arrests. A sixth, Ty Garbin, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in the case in January.

According to the Justice Department, the men met and trained over a six-month period in 2020, during which time they developed a plan to kidnap Whitmer from her second home and possibly take her out of state where she could be put on “trial” for being a “tyrant.” No plan was ever executed before authorities made arrests.

Eight other men were charged under Michigan’s anti-terrorism statutes for providing material support to the plotters. Half of the defendants in the combined cases were members of a militant group known as the Wolverine Watchmen, which was associated with the Three Percenters extremist movement. All but two are from the state of Michigan.

A trial in the federal case is currently scheduled for October. Monday marked a filing deadline for defense motions in that case.

Although prosecutors have acknowledged using informants to build the case, the court file to date has provided very little detail on their activities or identities save for one informant, who testified in March. According to an attorney for Franks, the government has shared ID numbers linked to 12 confidential informants but, with one exception, has not provided background on how they were recruited, what payments they may have received from the FBI, where they are based, or what their names are.

Such information would be crucial to “preparation of a defense to the charges,” Franks’ lawyer, Scott Graham, claimed.

Franks, meanwhile, asked that the case be moved out of the Western District of Michigan, on the grounds that “press coverage of (and participation in) this matter has corrupted the potential trial atmosphere to the point that Mr. Franks will be denied a fair trial in Michigan.”

Graham specifically cited a motion filed by BuzzFeed News to obtain access to exhibits shown in a hearing in the case in January as an example of the media involvement in the case and the risk of “prejudice in this case based on the extensive, negative, pervasive press coverage of the allegations.”

Franks also asked to be tried separately because he is not facing a bomb charge that was added to the case earlier this year. That count, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, applies to three of the other defendants who are alleged to have tried to build explosive devices or procure bomb-making materials. According to attorney Graham, potential allegations by prosecutors in court about that charge “will certainly go far in frightening jurors and eliciting emotional decisions from them.”

In yet another motion, filed late on Sunday, an attorney for Croft claimed that prosecutors had provided more than 5,000 duplicate files as it shared evidence, including no fewer than 15 copies of the same audio recording, significantly increasing the burden on the defense.

Separately the attorney, Joshua Blanchard, asked the court to exclude from evidence some items that were recovered from Croft’s Delaware residence during an FBI search in October because, he claims, they were outside the scope of the warrant. Among those items were a 1-kilogram silver bar, a handwritten code cipher, and “Mr. Croft’s hat.”

Croft, a long-haul truck driver and father of three girls, is known among Three Percenters for often wearing a tricorn hat like those from the time of the American Revolution.

[admin]

Former Acting Attorney General Testifies About Trump’s Efforts to Subvert Election: The testimony highlights the former president’s desire to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda.
by Katie by Benner
New York Times
Aug. 7, 2021

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WASHINGTON — Jeffrey A. Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the Trump administration, has told the Justice Department watchdog and congressional investigators that one of his deputies tried to help former President Donald J. Trump subvert the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the interviews.

Mr. Rosen had a two-hour meeting on Friday with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general and provided closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Saturday.

The investigations were opened after a New York Times article that detailed efforts by Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, to push top leaders to falsely and publicly assert that continuing election fraud investigations cast doubt on the Electoral College results. That prompted Mr. Trump to consider ousting Mr. Rosen and installing Mr. Clark at the top of the department to carry out that plan.

Mr. Trump never fired Mr. Rosen, but the plot highlights the former president’s desire to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda.

Mr. Clark, who did not respond to requests for comment, said in January that all of his official communications with the White House “were consistent with law,” and that he had engaged in “a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president.”

Mr. Rosen did not respond to requests for comment. The inspector general’s spokesman declined to comment.

Mr. Rosen has emerged as a key witness in multiple investigations that focus on Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the results of the election. He has publicly stated that the Justice Department did not find enough fraud to affect the outcome of the election.

On Friday Mr. Rosen told investigators from the inspector general’s office about five encounters with Mr. Clark, including one in late December during which his deputy admitted to meeting with Mr. Trump and pledged that he would not do so again, according to a person familiar with the interview.

Mr. Rosen also described subsequent exchanges with Mr. Clark, who continued to press colleagues to make statements about the election that they found to be untrue, according to a person familiar with the interview.

He also discovered that Mr. Clark had been engaging in unauthorized conversations with Mr. Trump about ways to have the Justice Department publicly cast doubt on President Biden’s victory, particularly in battleground states that Mr. Trump was fixated on, like Georgia. Mr. Clark drafted a letter that he asked Mr. Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators, wrongly asserting that they should void Mr. Biden’s victory because the Justice Department was investigating accusations of voter fraud in the state.

New records show how fiercely Trump DOJ loyalists fought to help — and resist — his effort to steal the 2020 election
by Peter Weber
The Week
August 5, 2021

With much of the news media focused on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) Tuesday night, ABC News published a Dec. 28, 2020, letter from Jeffrey Clark, then the acting head of the Justice Department's civil division, to acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his acting deputy, Richard Donoghue. Clark's letter is "the single most damning piece of evidence yet" on former President Donald Trump's "comprehensive" and "dangerous" attempt to overturn his 2020 loss, Chris Hayes said on MSNBC Wednesday night.

Clark wanted Rosen and Donoghue to sign his draft letter telling Georgia's leaders the Justice Department "is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election" and has "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states." If Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) declined to call a special session to address "this important and urgent matter," Clark's draft letter claimed, the Justice Department believes "the Georgia General Assembly has implied authority under the Constitution of the United States to call itself into special session" and appoint its own presidential electors.

Clark's letter was, "in other words, a road map to overthrowing the will of voters," The Washington Post's Philip Bump wrote Wednesday. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) told MSNBC on Wednesday night that Clark had drafted similar letters to six states Trump lost, encouraging Republicans to overturn President Biden's win.

Rosen and Donoghue flatly refused. "There is no chance that I would sign this letter or anything remotely like this," Donoghue emailed Clark a few hours after receiving the draft. Rosen added later he "confirmed again today that I am not prepared to sign such a letter."

"By itself, this back-and-forth is probably without precedent," Bump writes. "But slotted into the other events we know were occurring at the same time, we see just how desperately Trump was scrambling to gain a toehold in his efforts to upend a Biden presidency" — and how close he came.

On Jan. 3, for example, Trump nearly replaced Rosen with Clark in a fraught Oval Office meeting. On Wednesday, Politico published an email senior DOJ official Patrick Hovakimian wrote in preparation for Rosen's expected ouster. Rosen had "repeatedly refused the president's direct instructions" to misuse the DOJ's "law enforcement powers," so he and Donoghue "resign from the department, effusively immediacy," Hovakimian's unsent email said.

University of Texas Law professor Steve Vladeck said "Clark's (insane) draft letter lays bare" that Trump's legal effort was always just a "thinly veiled cover for overturning the result of a democratic election."

Steve Vladeck @steve_vladeck Aug 3, 2021
Replying to @steve+vladeck
You may say "there's nothing new here." But there is: It's evidence of just how far lawyers *inside* the administration were willing to go to effectuate a coup (yes, it would've been an "autogolpe," but you get the gist). That Clark's superiors shut this down is a relief, but...

Steve Vladeck
@steve_vladeck

...the fact that it even got this far drives home (1) just how close we were to things being even worse; and (2) just how much it was people *inside* the administration, and not just outside, who were trying to prevent the peaceful transition of power from actually taking place.
7:01 PM Aug 3, 2021

MSNBC's Hayes was more dramatic, arguing Clark should face consequences for having "aimed a nuclear weapon at the United States of America's democracy."

A newly released letter tells us more about Trump’s last-ditch push to steal the election: The insurrection before the insurrection
by Philip Bump
National correspondent
The Washington Post
August 4, 2021 at 10:59 a.m. EDT

Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election by 7 million actual votes and 74 electoral votes, a fate that was cemented in early November after states finished counting ballots. But to Trump, that was simply the starting point of the second phase of the battle to steal Joe Biden’s victory by any means possible.

Trump had spent months — years, really — laying the groundwork. He’d repeatedly sowed doubt about the security of elections, without evidence, leveraging long-standing Republican rhetoric about election fraud as a personal defense mechanism. The advent of the coronavirus pandemic allowed Trump to apply a new sheen to the old claims, focusing on an increase in mail-in ballots as a conduit for what he insisted would be an avalanche of fraudulent voting. It allowed him to falsely suggest that anything counted after, say, midnight on Election Day was suspect — which he did, over and over.

Many Americans justifiably see the riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6 as the apex of the effort to keep Trump in office. It was certainly the most dangerous moment and the most striking, but even it was nearly matched a few hours later when a majority of the House Republican caucus voted to block the counting of electoral votes from two states, precisely the outcome that the rioters hoped to effect. In recent months, though, we’ve learned that Trump’s most direct effort to steal the election unfolded about a week prior, over the last few days of 2020.

On Tuesday, ABC News published a letter circulated by the then-acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, a man named Jeffrey Clark. Addressed to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and state legislative leaders, the draft letter dated Dec. 28 claimed that the department was “investigating various irregularities” in the presidential contest and that it had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election.” The stated recommendation was that the legislature “convene in special session so that its legislators are in a position to take additional testimony, receive new evidence, and deliberate on the matter” — something that the letter describes as “consistent with its duties under the U.S. Constitution” as it pertains to the selection of presidential electors.

The letter went on to suggest that an alternative slate of electors — that is, electors for Trump — might be accepted on Jan. 6 should the legislature demand that happen. Understanding that Kemp had already risen to the defense of the results in the state, Clark claimed in the letter that the legislature could simply call itself into session to make that determination.

It was, in other words, a road map to overthrowing the will of voters. The amount of detail given to the mechanism for handing the electors to Trump was matched by the dearth of specificity about the alleged “irregularities” in the state.

The acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, and acting deputy attorney general, Richard Donoghue, rejected the letter out of hand — a well-founded decision that nonetheless prevented a dicey situation from getting worse. Donoghue’s lengthy response, one probably written with an eye toward it eventually being read by external eyes, made all of the points you might expect. The purported “irregularities” amounted to nothing more than a few ticky-tack questions about individual votes, concerns “that are of such a small scale that they simply would not impact the outcome of the Presidential Election,” Donoghue wrote. Nothing he knew of, he added, would amount to “significant concerns” elsewhere that would similarly call the results into question.

“More importantly,” he added, “I do not think the Department’s role should include making recommendations to a State legislature about how they should meet their Constitutional obligation to appoint Electors.” In other words: It is not the Justice Department’s place to tell states how to overturn election results.

Sending the letter, he concluded, was “not even within the realm of possibility.”

By itself, this back-and-forth is probably without precedent. But slotted into the other events we know were occurring at the same time, we see just how desperately Trump was scrambling to gain a toehold in his efforts to upend a Biden presidency.

Remember, this was after every state had already certified its results (something that Trump and his allies tried desperately to prevent, coming close in Michigan). It was after the electors had met Dec. 14 and finalized their formal votes to be transmitted to D.C. (That Georgia Republicans held their own invalid vote on Trump’s behalf was an element of Clark’s proposal.) In other words, there was no real way for the results to shift, barring something exceptional. So Trump and his allies tried to gin up something exceptional, with a particular focus on Georgia.

The attorney general who served Trump so loyally in the second half of his administration, William P. Barr, left the administration on Dec. 23, elevating Rosen to that position. Barr had already publicly rejected the idea that rampant fraud had occurred, earning Trump’s ire. Barr’s departure was announced Dec. 14 — and Trump’s team wasted no time in pressuring Rosen on their fraud claims. Trump’s assistant sent Rosen a document that afternoon purporting to show fraud in Michigan. On Dec. 15, the president called Rosen into the Oval Office to insist that he file legal arguments claiming that the election was stolen. Rosen refused.

On Dec. 27, with Rosen now running the Justice Department, Trump called the acting attorney general. Notes from the call taken by Donoghue that were released last week show the thrust of the conversation.

Trump suggested that Rosen's team “may not be following the internet the way I do,” which was certainly true, given that Trump was busily elevating many obviously unreliable online claims to his millions of followers on social media. Trump needed to “understand that the DOJ can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election, doesn’t work that way,” Rosen replied, according to Donoghue's notes.

“[ i] don’t expect you to do that,” Trump said in response, “just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.”

That latter assurance was probably centered on Trump’s looking forward to lawmakers challenging the vote on Jan. 6, as they in fact did. (Trump had also already begun encouraging his supporters to come to D.C. that day, promising in a tweet on Dec. 19 that the day “will be wild!”) But Trump clearly felt that the lawmakers would need something more substantive in hand before the day arrived. On Dec. 29, for example, Trump’s assistant sent Rosen and Donoghue a draft lawsuit the president hoped would be filed with the Supreme Court. It mirrored a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas that the court had already declined to hear.

The day after the “just say the election was corrupt” call, Clark circulated his letter that just said exactly that. But Clark’s letter was almost certainly not something that occurred independently of Trump. Clark was introduced to Trump by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), and he began talking with Trump directly. (Perry at another point also forwarded Donoghue a document detailing debunked claims about fraud in his state.) Trump began speculating about tossing Rosen in favor of the more acquiescent Clark, something Clark obviously favored. On Dec. 31, Rosen and Donoghue met with Clark to tell him to back off his false claims about the election, unaware that he had Trump’s ear.

On Jan. 2, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and said members of his team just “need more time” to uncover “the big numbers” of fraudulent ballots, a search that remains unrequited. He accused Raffensperger of violating the law by not taking steps to acknowledge Trump’s imaginary fraudulent ballots.

“All I want to do is this,” Trump said. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”

Then just leave the rest to him.

The next day, Clark told Rosen that he was going to be made acting attorney general by Trump. That led to a contentious meeting in the Oval Office involving all three men in which Trump weighed making such a switch to advance his fraud claims. A number of senior Justice Department officials had promised to resign should it happen, which the New York Times credits with helping preserve Rosen’s job. But that outcome was by no means certain. Replacing Rosen would probably have meant a quick issuance of Clark’s letter and a public rationalization for Georgia’s Republican-led legislature to act in support of Trump’s effort to snatch away the state’s electoral votes.

With Jan. 6 approaching, Trump continued to try to shake free Georgia’s electoral votes. The U.S. attorney for Georgia, a Trump appointee, resigned on Jan. 4 after receiving a call spurred by the White House complaining about his failure to launch investigations of alleged fraud. (The president of Ukraine can empathize.) But it was soon too late to redirect the vote-counting on Jan. 6, save for the efforts of the pro-Trump rioters.

That does not mean the effort has stopped. Trump continues to try to gin up doubt about the election results, despite the lack of a mechanism for being reinstated as president. Even now, his approach is the same as it was seven months ago: Just get someone, somewhere to say that something untoward happened, and leave the rest to him.

Top DOJ official drafted resignation email amid Trump election pressure: The never-sent email, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, highlights the pressures at the department as the former president tried to overturn his loss.
by Betsy Woodruff Swan and Nicholas Wu
politico.com
08/04/2021 01:41 PM EDT
Updated: 08/05/2021 10:55 AM EDT

In early January 2021, one top Justice Department official was so concerned that then-President Donald Trump might fire his acting attorney general that he drafted an email announcing he and a second top official would resign in response.

The official, Patrick Hovakimian, prepared the email announcing his own resignation and that of the department's second-in-command, Richard Donoghue, as Trump considered axing acting attorney general Jeff Rosen. At the time, Hovakimian was an associate deputy attorney general and a senior adviser to Rosen.

But Trump didn’t fire Rosen, and Hovakimian's draft email — a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO — remained unsent. The fact that Trump-era DOJ officials went that far highlights the serious pressures they faced in the waning days of the administration as the former president tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

“This evening, after Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen over the course of the last week repeatedly refused the President’s direct instructions to utilize the Department of Justice’s law enforcement powers for improper ends, the President removed Jeff from the Department,” Hovakimian wrote in his never-sent email. “PADAG Rich Donoghue and I resign from the Department, effective immediately.”

Hovakimian then wrote that preserving DOJ’s institutional integrity was Rosen’s top concern.

“The decision of whether and when to resign and whether the ends of justice are best served by resigning is a highly individual question, informed by personal and family circumstances,” he continued. “Jeff asked me to pass on to each of you that whatever your own decision, he knows you will adhere always to the highest standards of justice and act always – and only – in the interests of the United States.”

Hovakimian drafted the email on Jan. 3 from the Justice Department’s headquarters after Rosen and Donoghue departed for a meeting with then-President Trump at the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter.

His draft email has not previously been published. Raphael Prober, a partner at Akin Gump and lawyer for Hovakimian, declined to comment.

The officials’ threat to resign was first reported by the New York Times, which said the group of Justice Department officials had taken part in a conference call organized by Donoghue. The officials had agreed on the call to resign together if Trump sacked Rosen.

The Hovakimian letter’s disclosure comes as the House Oversight Committee steps up its investigation into the tumultuous final weeks of the Trump administration and Trump’s attempts to pressure the Department of Justice to intervene in the 2020 election. Hovakimian sat for a closed-door, transcribed interview before the committee’s staff on Tuesday morning, and a Department of Justice memo cleared the way for others to testify as well.

The House Oversight committee has obtained a copy of the draft email. A spokesperson for the panel did not immediately provide comment.

Trump, for his part, has signaled he will not immediately try to block the officials from testifying. On Monday, his lawyer Doug Collins sent a letter saying the former president would not immediately sue to try to block former DOJ officials’ participation in the multiple probes scrutinizing Trump’s last weeks in office.

But Collins, a former House GOP lawmaker, appeared to walk back the letter in a Tuesday interview with Fox News where he seemed to suggest former DOJ officials should refuse to answer some congressional inquiries.

Collins “railed against the DOJ waiver as ‘political’ and said he hopes the former officials will withhold any information from Congress that would fall under executive privilege,” wrote Fox News reporter Tyler Olson.

“The former president still believes those are privileged communications that are covered under executive privilege,” Collins said, according to the Fox News article.

It is unclear what exactly Trump wants from the former DOJ officials and why he refuses to take legal action to protect communications that he believes should be covered by executive privilege. Collins did not immediately respond to a request for comment from POLITICO.

And his team doesn’t have much time to get their messaging straight. Hovakimian answered questions from congressional investigators the morning after Collins’ letter went out. Two other former DOJ officials are also scheduled to sit for interviews with House Oversight in the next two weeks, according to two people familiar with the committee’s plans.

In a Thursday morning statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi lauded Maloney's investigation into Trump's efforts to interfere with the Justice Department, calling the oversight push "historic" and adding that it would "contribute greatly to the work" the select committee was doing to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), confirmed in a Thursday morning interview that Donoghue and Rosen were also set to sit for interviews with his panel.

"They are on the list of people we’re going to interview," he said. Attorneys for Donoghue and Rosen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this report misstated the year Patrick Hovakimian drafted the email.

Such a letter would effectively undermine efforts by Mr. Clark’s colleagues to prevent the White House from overturning the election results, and Mr. Rosen and his top deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, rejected the proposal.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said Mr. Rosen discussed previously reported episodes, including his interactions with Mr. Clark, with the Senate Judiciary Committee. He called Mr. Rosen’s account “dramatic evidence of how intent Trump was in overthrowing the election.”

Mr. Blumenthal was one of a handful of senators, including Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, and Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, who sat through most of Mr. Rosen’s more than six hours of testimony. Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the committee; Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa; Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota; Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska; and Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, attended parts of the interview.

Mr. Blumenthal said Mr. Rosen presented new facts and evidence that led him to believe that the committee would need to answer “profound and important questions” about the roles that individuals in Mr. Trump’s orbit played in the effort to undermine the peaceful transition of power, “which is what Trump tried to do, intently and concertedly.”

As details of Mr. Clark’s actions emerge, it is unclear what, if any, consequences he could face. The Justice Department’s inspector general could make a determination about whether Mr. Clark crossed the line into potentially criminal behavior. In that case, the inspector general could refer the matter to federal prosecutors.

Mr. Rosen has spent much of the year in discussions with the Justice Department over what information he could provide to investigators, given that decision-making conversations between administration officials are usually kept confidential.

Douglas A. Collins, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said last week that the former president would not seek to bar former Justice Department officials from speaking with investigators. But Mr. Collins said he might take some undisclosed legal action if congressional investigators sought “privileged information.”

Mr. Rosen quickly scheduled interviews with congressional investigators to get as much of his version of events on the record before any players could ask the courts to block the proceedings, according to two people familiar with those discussions who are not authorized to speak about continuing investigations.

He also reached out directly to Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, and pledged to cooperate with his investigation, according to a person briefed on those talks.

Katie Benner covers the Justice Department. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @ktbenner

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Trump's New Lawyer, Doug Collins, Sends a Remarkable Letter to Jeff Rosen on Executive Privilege
by Glenn Kirschner
Aug 4, 2021

Former Congressman Doug Collin is now representing Donald Trump (I assume he got his retainer check up front). Collins just sent a truly remarkable letter to former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen regarding Rosen's upcoming appearances before Congress to testify about his conversations with Donald Trump. In a letter that should be studied by law students in a class called "Bad Lawyering 101", Collins asserts that it is unlawful for the Biden administration/the Department of Justice to waive executive privilege and allow Rosen and other DOJ officials to testify. But rather than saying that Collins will therefore bring a legal challenge to prevent the testimony, he instead says that because Donald Trump doesn't want to create a "distraction", they will not "seek judicial intervention" to stop the DOJ officials to testify about their conversations with Trump.

Wait . . .what???

Here is a breakdown of what's really at the heart of this absurd letter by Doug Collins.



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Trump says he will not try to stop former Justice Dept. officials from testifying to Congress.
by Katie Benner
New York Times
Published Aug. 3, 2021
Updated Aug. 7, 2021

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Former President Donald J. Trump said this week that he would not move to stop former Justice Department officials from testifying before two committees that are investigating the Trump administration’s efforts to subvert the results of the presidential election, according to letters from his lawyer obtained by The New York Times.

Mr. Trump said he would not sue to prevent six former Justice Department officials from testifying, according to letters sent to them on Monday by Douglas A. Collins, who was known as one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters when he served in Congress and who is now one of the former president’s lawyers.

Mr. Collins said Mr. Trump might take some undisclosed legal action if congressional investigators sought “privileged information” from “any other Trump administration officials or advisers,” including “all necessary and appropriate steps, on President Trump’s behalf, to defend the office of the presidency.”

The letters were not sent to the congressional committees, but rather to the potential witnesses, who cannot control whom Congress contacts for testimony or what information it seeks.

By allowing his former Justice Department officials to speak with investigators, Mr. Trump has paved the way for new details to emerge about his efforts to delegitimize the outcome of the election.

Even though department officials, including the former acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen and the former Attorney General William P. Barr, told him that President Biden had won the election, Mr. Trump pressed them to take actions that would cast the election results in doubt and to publicly declare it corrupt.

Mr. Trump and his allies have continued to falsely assert in public statements that the election was rigged and the results were fraudulent.

Mr. Rosen, Richard P. Donoghue, a former acting deputy attorney general, and others have agreed to sit down for closed-door, transcribed interviews with the House Oversight and Reform and Senate Judiciary Committees. The sessions are expected to begin as soon as this week, according to three people familiar with those interviews.

Last week, the Justice Department told former officials from the agency that they were allowed to provide “unrestricted testimony” to the committees, as long as it does not reveal grand-jury information, classified information or information about pending criminal cases.

The committees asked the Justice Department to allow former officials to testify after they opened investigations this year into the Trump White House’s efforts to undermine Mr. Biden’s victory, a pressure campaign that occurred in the weeks before Mr. Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol as Congress met to certify the electoral results.

The Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office generally deny such requests because they believe deliberative conversations between administration officials should be protected from public scrutiny.

But they ultimately decided to allow the interviews to proceed, saying in letters to the potential witnesses that the scope of the investigation concerned “extraordinary events,” including whether Mr. Trump tried to improperly use the Justice Department to advance his “personal political interests,” and thus constituted “exceptional circumstances.”

In his letter, which was reported earlier by Politico, Mr. Collins also said Mr. Trump continued to believe that the information sought by the committees “is and should be protected from disclosure by executive privilege.”

Mr. Collins said that no president had the power to unilaterally waive that privilege, and that the Biden administration had “not sought or considered” Mr. Trump’s views in deciding not to invoke it.

“Such consideration is the minimum that should be required before a president waives the executive privilege protecting the communications of a predecessor,” Mr. Collins wrote.

The committees have also received a slew of emails, handwritten notes and other documents from the department that show how Mr. Trump, Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, and others pushed the department to look into voter fraud allegations not supported by evidence, to ask the Supreme Court to vacate the election results and to publicly cast doubt on the outcome.

Congress has asked six former officials to testify in addition to Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue. That list includes Patrick Hovakimian, Mr. Rosen’s former chief of staff; Byung J. Pak, the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta; Bobby L. Christine, the former U.S. attorney in Savannah, Ga.; and Jeffrey Clark, the former acting head of the Civil Division.

Katie Benner covers the Justice Department. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @ktbenner

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 4, 2021, Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Says He Will Not Sue To Stop Officials From Testifying.

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Letter: Trump legal team not trying to block testimony of former DOJ officials
The Biden Justice Department issued a recent memo making clear it would not stand in the way of Congress seeking testimony from its predecessor’s DOJ.
by Betsy Woodruff Swan and Nicholas Wu
politico.com
08/02/2021 09:42 PM EDT
Updated: 08/02/2021 09:50 PM EDT

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Donald Trump's legal team signaled Monday that it will not immediately try to block testimony from former Justice Department officials who have been called before Congress, potentially clearing a roadblock from multiple investigations touching on the former president’s tenure.

In a letter to one of six Trump-era DOJ officials whose cooperation is being sought in congressional oversight efforts, former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), a member of Trump’s legal team, suggested that it would not try to block testimony by those six. The letter's unusual verbiage makes Trump's position slightly opaque, but Collins also indicated that the former president’s team would try to contest all attempts to secure testimony from ex-DOJ officials if Congress sought cooperation from more than those six.

“[W]ithout in any way otherwise waiving the executive privilege associated with the matters the committees are purporting to investigate, President Trump will agree not to seek judicial intervention to prevent your testimony or the testimony of the five other former Department officials … who have already received letters from the Department ... so long as the committees do not seek privileged information from any other Trump administration officials or advisors,” Collins wrote. “If the committees do seek such information, however, we will take all necessary and appropriate steps on President Trump’s behalf to defend the office of the presidency.”

House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) is seeking testimony from several former Trump officials in connection with Trump’s attempts to pressure the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election. Maloney asked for interviews with, among other officials, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and former Associate Deputy Attorney General Patrick Hovakimian.

Three other Trump-era DOJ officials have received requests for interviews from Maloney’s committee: former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Byung Jin Pak and former acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Bobby Christine.

Democratic lawmakers have expressed confidence that the ex-DOJ officials’ testimony could be expedited by a recent memo from the Biden Justice Department that made clear it would not stand in the way of Congress seeking testimony from its predecessor’s DOJ. Beyond Maloney’s committee, the select panel on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and the Senate Judiciary Committee are also poised to ramp up their investigations into the Trump administration in the coming weeks.

During his presidency, the Trump administration broadly asserted executive privilege and fought Democrats’ subpoenas, stymying Democrats’ attempts to investigate the administration.

But Democrats shouldn’t view testimony from ex-Trump DOJ officials as a done deal. The phrasing of the Collins-signed letter leaves open the possibility that the former president’s lawyers could later put up major legal fights if they conclude congressional Democrats have overstepped.

Collins did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Andrew Desiderio contributed to this report.

[admin]

As Trump pushed for probes of 2020 election, he called acting AG Rosen almost daily
by Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett
The Washington Post
July 28, 2021 at 6:59 p.m. EDT

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President Donald Trump called his acting attorney general nearly every day at the end of last year to alert him to claims of voter fraud or alleged improper vote counts in the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

The personal pressure campaign, which has not been previously reported, involved repeated phone calls to acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen in which Trump raised various allegations he had heard about and asked what the Justice Department was doing about the issue. The people familiar with the conversations spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive legal and political issues that are not yet public.

Rosen told few people about the phone calls, even in his inner circle. But there are notes of some of the calls that were written by a top aide to Rosen, Richard Donoghue, who was present for some of the conversations, these people said.

Donoghue’s notes could be turned over to Congress in a matter of days, they added, if Trump does not file papers in court seeking to block such a handover. In addition, both Rosen and Donoghue could be questioned about the conversations by congressional committees examining Trump’s actions in the days after the election.

The Justice Department recently notified Rosen, Donoghue and others who were serving there during the end of Trump’s presidency that the agency would not seek to invoke executive privilege if they are asked about their contacts with the president during that period.

That posture — which the letter to Rosen calls a departure from normal agency practice — means that individuals who are questioned by Congress would not have to say the conversations with the president were off-limits. They would be able to share details that give a firsthand account of Trump’s frantic attempts to overturn the 2020 election and involve the Justice Department in that effort.

Neither Rosen nor Donoghue responded to messages seeking comment, and Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for Trump also did not respond to a request for comment.

In May, Rosen pointedly told Congress he did not do many of the things Trump supporters had demanded.

“During my tenure, no special prosecutors were appointed, whether for election fraud or otherwise; no public statements were made questioning the election; no letters were sent to State officials seeking to overturn the election results; [and] no DOJ court actions or filings were submitted seeking to overturn election results,” Rosen testified.

The phone calls came in late 2020 and early 2021, when Trump and his supporters were furiously pressing for officials at all levels of the government to intercede in the usually routine process of certifying the election results — asking them to either launch new investigations, support unverified allegations of fraud or manipulation of vote counts, or otherwise throw up roadblocks to Democrat Joe Biden becoming president.

The calls began almost immediately after William P. Barr stepped down as attorney general in late December, and ended after the Jan. 6 insurrection at Congress, people familiar with them said.

Rosen was generally noncommittal, hearing the president out, while not promising to take any specific action in response, these people said. At times, they said, he would try to change the subject, but was usually unsuccessful. “Trump was absolutely obsessed about it,” one person with knowledge of the calls said.

One person familiar with the calls said Trump did not explicitly make any threats toward Rosen.

Trump was not the only one at the White House reaching out to the Justice Department about dubious claims of election vote tampering. Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, at times forwarded public claims of potential voter fraud to Justice Department officials, which some officials found exasperating, according to previously released emails. Meadows’s defenders have said he was just letting the department know about possible instances of illegality.

Trump’s calls to Rosen show the degree to which the president was personally involved in such efforts, however, and the ways in which Justice Department officials walked a tightrope of listening to the president while not taking any concrete actions they considered unethical or partisan.

The conversations also offer new clues into the president’s mind-set in early January, when he entertained a plan to replace Rosen with a different senior lawyer at the department — Jeffrey Clark — who was more amenable to pursuing Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud. That possibility nearly touched off a crisis at the highest levels of federal law enforcement, people familiar with the matter have previously said.

The president was ultimately dissuaded from moving forward after a high-stakes meeting with those involved, those people said. Clark has denied that he devised a plan to oust Rosen, or that he formed “recommendations for action based on factual inaccuracies gleaned from the Internet.”

On Monday, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer told Rosen in a letter: “You are authorized to provide information you learned while at the Department,” including “your knowledge of attempts to involve the Department in efforts to challenge or overturn the 2020 election results. This includes your knowledge of any such attempts by Department officials or by White House officials to engage in such efforts.”

The letter noted that the Senate Judiciary Committee is examining the time period after Dec. 14, 2020, when Barr announced he would leave the attorney general position. Barr officially left the job one week later, and Rosen took over as the acting head of the Justice Department. Trump had grown increasingly frustrated with Barr for not echoing or investigating his false claims of voter fraud — and even publicly disputing them.

The Justice Department letter noted that even former officials “are obligated to protect non-public information they learned in the course of their work,” and that they generally do not allow former officials to “disclose documents relating to such internal deliberations.”

However, the letter continues, the “extraordinary events in this matter constitute exceptional circumstances warranting an accommodation to Congress in this case,” including lawmakers’ effort to determine “whether former President Trump sought to cause the Department to use its law enforcement and litigation authorities to advance his personal political interests with respect to the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

As a result, the letter said, President Biden “has decided that it would not be appropriate to assert executive privilege with respect to communications with former President Trump and his advisors and staff on matters related to the scope of the Committees’ proposed interviews, notwithstanding the view of former President Trump’s counsel that executive privilege should be asserted to prevent testimony regarding these communications.”

Similar letters were sent to Donoghue and other Justice Department officials.

People close to Trump said discussions have already occurred about whether they should move to block the testimony and records from becoming public, but no final decision had been made.

Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal. Twitter

Devlin Barrett writes about the FBI and the Justice Department, and is the author of "October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election." He was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for National Reporting, for coverage of Russian interference in the U.S. election. Twitter

[admin]

Watch a defensive Mike Lindell get fact-checked by CNN over his baseless claims that China hacked the election
by Grace Dean
Business Insider
Aug 6, 2021, 3:49 AM

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was fact-checked by a CNN reporter over his baseless voter-fraud claims on Thursday — and he wasn't happy about it.

Lindell said the reporter, CNN's Drew Griffin, was wrong, accused him of lying, and even offered him a hug.

Lindell has repeatedly challenged the integrity of the 2020 election. In an interview with Griffin, Lindell said he had proof that "100%" showed China hacked the election and changed votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Lindell said he would reveal his proof at a so-called "cyber symposium" due to take place in South Dakota next week.

He had sent CNN a snippet of the data a few days before his interview. Griffin said CNN had shown the data — which consisted of six screenshots — to nine cybersecurity experts, who all said it was proof of nothing.

Lindell said the experts were wrong.

Anderson Cooper 360
@AC360
MyPillow's CEO keeps pushing false claims about the 2020 election.
"No matter who says there was no widespread fraud in the election...Mike Lindell's conclusion is the same -- they are all wrong," reports @DrewGriffinCNN.
5:53 PM Aug 5, 2021

Griffin said CNN had also spoken to election officials in the 15 counties whose votes Lindell claims were hacked. The election officials all said they used paper ballots counted by systems not connected to the internet, Griffin reported, and that they had no evidence the votes were hacked.

"I don't think you really understand how votes are cast, collected, and tabulated in this country," Griffin said to Lindell.

"You know what? I do," Lindell said. "What you don't understand is after they're tabulated, they can get hacked after the fact, which they were, because Donald Trump was going to win anyway."

Griffin said that the paper ballots were audited against the machine count. "No they weren't!" Lindell said. "Who told you that?"

When Griffin said it was the county officials, Lindell replied: "Well they're going to have some answering to do."

Griffin asked whether the county officials were lying.

"I don't know," Lindell said. "They might be misconstrued. ... They don't realize what happened."

Later in the interview, Griffin told Lindell that he could "possibly be the victim of a scam" over his support for voter-fraud conspiracy theories.

"Well then why don't you come to the symposium and make $5 million?" Lindell replied, referring to the cash prize he said he would give to anyone who debunks his data at the event. "Are you worried about me? We should have a hug. Are you worried about old Mike? Oh, God bless you."

Griffin replied that he was "worried that what you are doing is mistakenly or deliberately destroying the confidence in the legitimate, elected president of the United States and fostering what could be real damage to this country."

Lindell claimed he'd "never said anything bad about Biden or the Democrats. Ever! Never." He said Griffin was "wrong ... You're lying."

Lindell, who said in April that he still spoke to Trump about once a month, has poured time and money into spreading his voter-fraud theories.

He launched a website, Frank, to spread misinformation about the election, made a two-hour voter-fraud film, and held a rally at South Dakota's Corn Palace in May with guest speakers including Ben Carson, Trump's secretary of housing and urban development, and the conservative podcaster Eric Metaxas.

[admin]

Cyber expert says his team can’t prove Mike Lindell’s claims that China hacked election
by Joseph Clark
The Washington Times
Wednesday, August 11, 2021

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-- Colorado secretary of state accuses county clerk's office of assisting QAnon-affiliated leak of voting machine logins, by Paul P. Murphy and Jeremy Harlan

-- Cyber expert says his team can’t prove Mike Lindell’s claims that China hacked election, by Joseph Clark

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The cyber expert on the “red team” hired by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell now says the key data underpinning the theory that China hacked the 2020 election unveiled at the Cyber Symposium is illegitimate.

Mr. Lindell said he had 37 terabytes of “irrefutable” evidence that hackers, who he said were backed by China, broke into election systems and switched votes in favor of President Biden. The proof, he said, is visible in intercepted network data or “packet captures” that were collected by hackers and could be unencrypted to reveal that a cyberattack occurred and that votes were switched.

But cyber expert Josh Merritt, who is on the team hired by Mr. Lindell to interrogate the data for the symposium, told The Washington Times that packet captures are unrecoverable in the data and that the data, as provided, cannot prove a cyber incursion by China.

“So our team said, we’re not going to say that this is legitimate if we don’t have confidence in the information,” Mr. Merritt said on Wednesday, the second day of the symposium.

Mr. Merritt’s break from Mr. Lindell accelerated the unraveling of the MyPillow millionaire’s months of spinning of a conspiracy theory that he said would reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and restore former President Donald Trump to the White House.

Mr. Lindell delayed a scheduled unveiling of his evidence on Wednesday at the symposium.

He had offered $5 million to any in-person attendee who can disprove his claims. The offer is no longer on the table, Mr. Merritt said.

Leading up to the seminar, Mr. Lindell had displayed a video of scrolling, incomprehensible text, which he claimed were the packet captures he had received — proof, he claimed, of his China hacking theory. The video was featured in his documentary “Absolute 9-0” and was played on loop on screens throughout the convention center during the symposium.

Cybersecurity expert J. Kirk Wiebe, a former senior National Security Agency analyst and whistleblower, also said Mr. Lindell did not have the actual data sets.

He said the scrolling text was likely meant to resemble what the packet captures would look like in the data set but were not actual packet captures, which are vital to prove the claims.

Several cyber experts at the symposium became frustrated late into the first day with not being provided with packet captures.

Mr. Merritt and Mr. Wiebe said the missing packet captures could be a result of either the format the data was sent in or they were withheld by the source of the information, Dennis L. Montgomery.

Mr. Montgomery is a former government contractor who developed cyber tools named HAMMER and SCORECARD, which were allegedly used by the U.S. to influence foreign elections. Mr. Montgomery came forward with the data after he said the tools were being used to influence U.S. elections, according to Mr. Wiebe.

Mr. Merritt confirmed that Mr. Montgomery was the source of the data.

But the data Mr. Montgomery sent contains no packet captures and cannot be used to validate Mr. Lindell’s marquee theory, which he planned to unveil at the symposium, said the two experts.

Mr. Montgomery reportedly suffered a stroke on the eve of the symposium and has not been in contact with Mr. Lindell’s team or any cyber experts at the symposium.

He has been behind several other high-profile conspiracy theories, including allegations that U.S. security agencies wiretapped Trump Tower while Mr. Trump was running for president in 2016.

Mr. Montgomery said he presented the wiretap evidence to then-FBI Director James B. Comey, who dismissed the information. Mr. Montgomery later sued Mr. Comey, alleging a cover-up. The lawsuit was dropped.

Mr. Montgomery has also publicly claimed that the 2020 election was manipulated, which former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Christopher Krebs said was a “hoax.”

Still, Mr. Merritt said, the data did contain important “forensic” evidence of manipulated voters.

“We were handed a turd,” he said. “And I had to take that turd and turn it into a diamond. And that’s what I think we did.”

The symposium organizers unveiled data Wednesday in front of the audience, which they said showed tampering in the 2020 presidential election in Mesa County, Colorado. The presentation was ad hoc and separate from Mr. Lindell’s original claim of a nationwide hack.

Mesa County’s clerk and recorder, Tina Peters, headlined Day One of the gathering. Ms. Peters is under investigation for a potential election security breach from within her office.

Mr. Lindell’s team would not confirm the source of the data used for Wednesday’s presentation.

Phil Waldron who is the leader of the red team, said only a small slice of the data was provided to the red team, just days before the symposium.

Mr. Waldron said the remaining data, not interrogated during the symposium, could contain the packet captures and other data needed to prove China hacked the election. He also said that ample evidence was contained in the data that points to other significant election anomalies, that were just as significant and worth unpacking during the symposium.

Kurt Olsen, a lawyer on Mr. Lindell’s team said there were multiple sources of the data that Mr. Lindell claims to have, and did not confirm that Mr. Mongtomery was the source of the data. He also clarified that the $5 million challenge has not been canceled and that Mr. Merritt would not be privy to that information.

Clarification: The article previously described Mr. Merritt as Lindell’s lead cyber expert. Mr. Merritt is a cyber expert on the red team hired by Mr. Lindell to interrogate the data for the symposium, and does not work directly for Mr. Lindell.

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