Senate Panel Fleshed Out How Ex-Prez Planned To Install A Loyalist As Acting AG To Pursue Reports Of Fraud

Report Cites New Details Of Trump Pressure On Justice Dept Over Polls

- Katie Benner

Washington: Even by the standards of President Donald Trump, it was an extraordinary Oval Office showdown. On the agenda was Trump’s desire to install a loyalist as acting attorney general to carry out his demands for more aggressive investigations into his unfounded claims of election fraud. On the other side during that meeting on the evening of January 3 were the top leaders of the justice department, who warned Trump that they and other senior officials would resign en masse if he followed through. They received immediate support from another key participant: Pat A Cipollone, the White House counsel. According to others at the meeting, Cipollone indicated that he and his top deputy, Patrick F Philbin, would also step down if Trump acted on his plan. Trump’s proposed plan, Cipollone argued, would be a “murder-suicide pact,” one participant recalled. Only near the end of the nearly three-hour meeting did Trump relent and agree to drop his threat.

Cipollone’s stand that night is among the new details contained in a lengthy interim report prepared by the Senate Judiciary Committee about Trump’s efforts to pressure the justice department to do his bidding in the chaotic final weeks of his presidency. The report draws on documents, emails and testimony from three top justice department officials, including the acting attorney general for Trump’s last month in office, Jeffrey A Rosen; the acting deputy attorney general, Richard P Donoghue, and Byung J Pak, who until early January was US attorney in Atlanta. It provides the most complete account yet of Trump’s efforts to push the department to validate election fraud claims that had been disproved by the FBI and state investigators.