Former President Donald Trump through a lawyer and White House officials placed pressure on Department of Justice (DOJ) officials to probe the 2020 election results and wanted the Supreme Court to authorize a new election in key swing states, according to newly released emails.
Kurt Olsen, a Trump lawyer, was shown in one of the emails asking DOJ officials to connect him to then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. He said that he represented Texas in the Supreme Court lawsuit against Pennsylvania and other states and that Trump “directed” him to meet with Rosen “to discuss a similar action to be brought by the United States.”
A draft document attached to Olsen’s December 2020 message alleges elections in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada violated the U.S. Constitution. It asks the Supreme Court to stop the states from using their election results to appoint presidential electors to the Electoral College and to authorize them “to conduct a special election” to appoint electors.
The document was never filed.
The Texas lawsuit noted that non-legislative officials in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin put into place election measures without the approval of their legislatures. Texas asked the Supreme Court to declare the election in the states unconstitutional. At least one judge said the arguments had merit, blocking certification of the election results in Pennsylvania in a separate case until her order was overturned and the case was dismissed.
The Supreme Court ultimately rejected Texas’s lawsuit.
Molly Michael, an assistant to Trump, also directly sent Rosen and other DOJ officials the draft complaint Trump wanted the United States to file.
In another set of emails, Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff at the time, asked Rosen to have the DOJ investigate fraud allegations.
In one message to Rosen, Meadows sent a petition contesting the election that was submitted to Fulton County Superior Court by Trump and David Shafer, the Georgia Republican Party chairman.
“Can you have your team look into these allegations of wrongdoing. Only the alleged fraudulent activity. Thanks Mark,” the email stated.
The petitioners on Jan. 7 voluntarily withdrew the petition.
In another email, Meadows told Rosen that there had been allegations of signature match anomalies in Fulton County, Georgia.
He asked Rosen to get a DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, “to engage on this issue immediately to determine if there is any truth to this allegation.”
Rosen sent the email to Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general, commenting: “Can you believe this? I am not going to respond.”
Rosen did ask Clark to followup on allegations of fraud in Atlanta and Clark said he was doing so.
A group of Georgia voters is engaged in an ongoing petition regarding fraud claims in Fulton County. A judge is set to hear motions to dismiss on Monday. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, meanwhile, is probing how a county official recently said some forms documenting chain of custody for mail-in ballots are “missing.”
Meadows also requested a review of allegations of fraud in New Mexico and sent Rosen documents and a video that claimed American electoral data was changed in facilities in Italy, with assistance from U.S. intelligence officials.
Donoghue, who again forwarded one of the emails, called the claims “pure insanity.”
Rosen said he learned that Brad Johnson, who created the video, was working with Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and refused a request to have the FBI meet with Johnson.
The emails were released by House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who said they “show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost.”
“Those who aided or witnessed President Trump’s unlawful actions must answer the Committee’s questions about this attempted subversion of democracy,” she added.
Maloney’s panel wants Meadows, Donoghue, Clark, and several others to sit for transcribed interviews.
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump did not return requests for comment sent to his campaign and political action committee.
Trump has made no secret of his view that the 2020 election was rife with fraud. Last week, after the DOJ announced it would focus on protecting voter access and probe election audits for possible legal violations, Trump said the agency would seem to have “no choice but to look at the massive voter fraud which took place in certain Swing States, and I assume elsewhere, during the 2020 Presidential Election Scam.”
“Whether it be voting machines, underaged people, dead people, illegal aliens, ballot drops, ballot cheating, absentee ballots, post office delivery (or lack thereof!), lock boxes, people being paid to vote, or other things, the 2020 Presidential Election is, in my mind, the Crime of the Century,” he added.
Via The Epoch Times
