Former United States President Donald Trump attempted to pressure members of the Justice Department into supporting his baseless claims of election fraud, per newly released emails from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
The House Committee shared a press release Tuesday from Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, the Chairwoman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, releasing the appropriate documents that reveal the former President's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results through the Department of Justice. The documents show that Trump and his allies pressured DOJ officials around last December and early January through email communication in a thinly-veiled attempt at keeping him in power.
“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,” Chairwoman Maloney said. “Those who aided or witnessed President Trump’s unlawful actions must answer the Committee’s questions about this attempted subversion of democracy."
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Minutes before announcing that former Attorney General William Barr would step down from his position, Trump's assistant sent phony election fraud "proof" documents to Deputy Attorney Jeffrey Rosen. The documents alleged that there was a cover-up regarding voting machines in Michigan and that the state couldn't certify Biden's win, and there were set talking points included to reflect those false claims. Trump then tweeted that Rosen would serve as Acting Attorney General, supplanting Barr – who firmly did not believe there was any kind of election fraud going on – for someone who could regurgitate his falsified talking points.
Later in December, Trump used official White House channels, along with a private attorney, to pressure the DOJ to file a Supreme Court lawsuit to nullify the election results, alleging that Electoral College votes cast in six states – which he lost – couldn't be counted and requesting that the Court order a "special election" for him in those states. Trump's private attorney, Kurt Olsen, contacted these senior DOJ officials on his behalf to nudge them into filing the complaint in an urgent manner.
These attempts at nullifying the election ultimately built up to the Capitol insurrection that took place on January 6. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform is currently working toward highlighting the Trump Administration's failure to adequately anticipate and prevent the events of the insurrection.