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