Donald Trump opened an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 3 by complaining to his acting attorney general that he wasn’t doing enough to “overturn” his election loss.
An interim report issued by the Senate Judiciary Committee shows that former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen recalled the White House meeting began with the ousted president pressured him in front of other administration officials to undo his election loss, just three days before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win, reported The Daily Beast.
“One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election,” Trump groused.
The meeting ended with several Justice Department officials and White House counsel Pat Cipollone threatening to resign if Trump replaced Rosen with a loyalist who would act to overturn the election.
“Beginning on the day former Attorney General William Barr announced his resignation and continuing almost until the January 6 insurrection, Trump directly and repeatedly asked DOJ’s acting leadership to initiate investigations, file lawsuits on his behalf, and publicly declare the 2020 election ‘corrupt,'” the report states.
The interim report identifies nine calls and meetings with Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue between mid-December, when Barr announced he was leaving the administration, and early January where Trump ordered them to help him stay in power.
Trump had decided by Jan. 3, when two such meetings occurred, that he would replace Rosen with lower-ranking Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who had allegedly urged Rosen and Donoghue to falsely tell Georgia officials they had found problems with its election result.
“Well, I guess that’s it,” Donoghue remembers telling Rosen, after Clark told the acting attorney general that Trump wanted him to take over. “Are we going to find out [that we’re fired] in a tweet?”
“At that point, I went back to my office and I began taking things off the wall and put them in boxes, because I told the Acting AG I would immediately resign,” Donoghue added. “There was no way I was going to serve under Jeff Clark.”