Letter shows Trump wanted to reverse defeat at the 1:15 polls
(CNN) -
A flurry of new revelations exposing former President Donald Trump's extraordinary efforts to steal power after his electoral defeat is a dire warning about the future and his potential bid to win back the White House.
The audacity of the former president's attempts to subvert the law by using the Justice Department as a weapon not only underscores how close the United States came to a full-blown constitutional crisis this year. It also emphasizes that any attempt by Trump to use war spoils already worth $ 100 million to try to win back the White House in 2024 would pose a deadly threat to democracy and the rule of law from a leader who was not even intimidated. for his first impeachment.
New revelations emerging from Senate testimony about alleged behind-the-scenes efforts by a Trump loyalist at the Justice Department to challenge elections in the states that the former president lost also make the ongoing Republican whitewash of history on Trump's crimes against the Constitution are even more blatant and dangerous.
This staggering trend of attacks on American democracy is exacerbated by the Republican Party's efforts in the states to restrict minority and Democratic voting and facilitate the reversal of future election results.
Trump could not scoff at the will of the voters in 2020. Some election experts fear that he, or another like-minded Republican strongman, could be successful in the future.
And ultimately, the avalanche of shocking new revelations means that a possible new Trump campaign in the White House in 2024 would have the most dire implications for American democracy in decades.
Given Trump's record of impunity, a new administration could be replete with loyalists who would not resist abuses of power, such as his efforts to reverse the elections, which were blocked this time by officials at the Department of Justice and in the states led. for the Republican Party.
ANALYSIS |
The full picture of Donald Trump's coup attempt is just beginning to emerge
'Terrifying' maneuvers at Trump's Justice Department
The latest evidence of Trump's undemocratic lie came in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday and Saturday by two senior Justice Department officials.
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The chairman of the Judiciary Commission, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that the testimony exposed the "terrifying" maneuvers in the department after the November elections.
Another Democrat, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, told CNN's Manu Raju that after hearing testimony Saturday from former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, he was surprised by "how close the country came to total catastrophe" earlier in the year. this year.
Both Rosen and the other official, Richard Donoghue, then the acting Deputy Attorney General, pointed to another Trump-appointed official, Jeffrey Clark, as a person at the center of an effort to help the then-president undermine election results and potentially oust. to Clark's bosses who resisted Trump's efforts.
A familiar source said the testimony provided new details about a January 3 meeting at the White House in which Trump had Rosen and Clark audition effectively for the job of acting attorney general. The president ultimately decided not to replace Rosen with Clark. Rosen and Donoghue testified that Trump did not order them to do anything illegal and ultimately accepted that the Justice Department could not claim voter fraud when there was no evidence that it had occurred.
ABC News first reported that Clark, a Trump-appointed chief of environmental law in the department, drafted a letter that asked Rosen to send Georgia state legislators to tell them they should meet to examine election irregularities. .
The New York Times
said Clark's letter asked lawmakers to overturn Biden's victory, citing false claims that the department was investigating allegations of fraud in the state.
Durbin told CNN's Dana Bash that he could not yet comment on the details of the testimony, but that there would be a report.
He also said that he would like Clark to testify about his role.
Clark's attorney declined to comment with CNN.
The Illinois senator said he was surprised by "how directly and personally the president was involved, the pressure he was putting on Jeffrey Rosen."
He added: "It was real, very real. And it was very specific. This president is not subtle when he wants something, the former president. He is not subtle when he wants something."
When asked by Bash if Trump tried to get Rosen to overturn the election results, Durbin replied, "It wasn't that direct, but he was asking him to do certain things related to the state election results, which he refused to do."
ANALYSIS |
Trump's $ 100 Million Threat to Democracy
"The White House, the leadership of the White House, asked him to meet with certain people who had these crazy and strange theories of why that election was not valid. And he refused to do it," said the chairman of the Commission .
Durbin praised Rosen for standing firm against the former president's undemocratic schemes and presented a scenario surrounding the resignation of former Attorney General William Barr that Trump considered and that reflected the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" of the Watergate scandal.
"The president was looking for the green light from a attorney general. Bill Barr got to a point where he couldn't do it anymore. And Rosen stepped in and he wasn't ready to do it. And the president said, 'We'll find another one," "Durbin said. , in an apparent reference to Clark.
A timeline of serious abuses of power
The revelations came just days after it emerged that Donoghue's written notes about a December 2020 call showed that the former president pressured Rosen to declare the election fraudulent in an attempt to help Republican members of Congress to nullify Biden's victory.
"Just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and Congressmen R.," Trump said on the call, according to Donoghue's notes.
New details of the drama at the Justice Department are showing the record of Trump's final days in office after startling revelations in new books about Trump's behavior during that tumultuous period.
In the most extraordinary new twist,
The Washington Post reporters
Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley feared that Trump might attempt to use the military to strike a coup.
Top U.S. generals feared Trump would attempt a post-election coup, according to a new book
The patchwork of new details shows that Trump's deranged behavior after losing the election was not only more extreme than it appeared from the outside. The emerging timeline also suggests that Trump attempted one of the most radical crimes against the Constitution in American history. He tried to use presidential power to reverse elections in Georgia and elsewhere. He put enormous pressure on career officials to accept his corruption. And he called a mob to Washington, which, incited by his lies, organized an insurrection against Congress in the act of certification of Joe Biden's electoral victory. If Trump were still in power, the new details of such abuses of power would certainly merit a third impeachment.
The shocking revelations of recent weeks come as Trump appears to be at least preparing the ground for a future presidential campaign.
The former president has already seriously damaged faith in the electoral system by convincing millions of his supporters that he was removed from power in a free and fair election that he clearly lost.
And the fact that the Republican Party has not allowed there to be consequences for its attack on democracy, and the efforts of many of its legislators and media propagandists to erase history and invent a completely new reality of the events that surrounded the insurrection of January 6, they are effectively paving the way for their political rehabilitation.
The latest developments also undermine the arguments of Republican senators who were unwilling to convict the former president at his second impeachment earlier this year for the insurrection on Capitol Hill.
The idea that the process was unnecessary as Trump was no longer in power and could do no more harm is now contradicted by evidence of his strongman behavior and attempts to rebuild his political career.
Washington police reveal the suicide of an agent who defended the Capitol from the January assault
That effort to avoid a full recount of the events of January 6 is one of the reasons the recently launched House Select Committee's work on the attack on Capitol is so crucial. The final report of the panel, combined with the recent work of the Senate Judiciary Committee, offers the best opportunity to put together an official record of one of the most tense and tense presidential transfers of power in American history.
That a candidate who is guilty of such blatant abuses of power and possesses such autocratic and undemocratic impulses is a viable prospect for the presidential nomination of one of America's major political parties shows the current extraordinary state of politics.
It also means that whether or not he eventually runs, Trump's legacy of epic political corruption will pose a grave threat to democratic traditions that most people considered invulnerable.
Donald trump
