Pure insanity: Justice Dept. rebuffed Trump bid to overturn election

Former President Donald Trump pressed the Justice Department during his waning weeks in office to join his failed effort to overturn his election defeat based on his false claims of voting fraud, but its leaders refused, with one decrying the “pure insanity” of the claims, documents released on Tuesday showed.

The House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee, which obtained the records as part of an investigation, outlined a series of overtures made by the Republican former president, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and an outside private attorney, Kurt Olsen, pushing the department to act on Trump’s claims.

The department ultimately did not join the effort and numerous courts rejected lawsuits seeking to overturn election results in various states.

Congress also is investigating the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters trying to stop the formal certification of Democratic President Joe Biden’s election victory.

“These documents 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,” said Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat.

These overtures were separate from the revelations that the Trump-era Justice Department secretly sought the phone records of at least two Democratic lawmakers, a move that led Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday to vow to strengthen policies aiming to protect the department from political influence.

U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a Bible as he stands in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House after walking there for a photo opportunity during ongoing protests over racial inequality in the wake of the death of George Floyd, at the White House in Washington, U.S., June 1, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner/File Photo

The department under outgoing Attorney General William Barr, who left his post on Dec. 23, and his short-term replacement Jeffrey Rosen decided not to act on the false claims of voting fraud. Biden took office on Jan. 21.

The emails showed that Meadows asked Justice Department officials to investigate an unfounded conspiracy theory called “Italygate” alleging that U.S. electoral data was changed in Italian facilities with the knowledge of the CIA.

On Jan. 1, Meadows sent Rosen a link to a YouTube video detailing the theory. Rosen forwarded the email to then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, who replied: “Pure insanity.”

The documents also showed that Trump pressured Rosen when he was deputy attorney general to have the Justice Department take up the election fraud claims.

The emails showed Rosen declined to arrange a meeting between Justice Department officials and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about his false claims that the November election was stolen from Trump. Meadows had asked Rosen to help arrange the proposed meeting with Giuliani, the emails showed.

“I flatly refused, said I would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his ‘witnesses,’ and re-affirmed yet again that I will not talk to Giuliani about any of this,” Rosen wrote to a Justice Department colleague on Jan. 1.

Giuliani had played a prominent role in promoting Trump’s false election claims.

Trump, through an assistant, sent Rosen a Dec. 14 email with documents purporting to show evidence of election fraud in northern Michigan – a debunked allegation that a federal judge had already rejected.

Two weeks later, on Dec. 29, Trump’s White House assistant emailed Rosen, who by then was the acting attorney general, and other Justice Department lawyers a draft legal brief that they were urged to file at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The department never filed the brief. Emails released by the House committee showed that Olsen, a Maryland lawyer involved in writing Trump’s draft brief, repeatedly tried to meet with Rosen but was unsuccessful.

The draft brief backed by Trump argued that changes made by the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania to voting procedures amid the COVID-19 pandemic to expand mail-in voting were unlawful. Biden won all those states

Similar arguments were made in a lawsuit filed by Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas and a Trump ally. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected that long-shot lawsuit in December.

Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The document release comes ahead of the House Oversight committee’s hearing with FBI director Christopher Wray and General Charles Flynn, brother of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has also voiced Trump’s election conspiracy theories.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Susan Heavey; Editing by Will Dunham, Scott Malone and Steve Orlofsky)