Old President Trump
Donald TrumpNYT: Rep. Perry played a role in Trump’s alleged plan to oust AG Arizona action GOP censors top state Republicans McCain, Flake and Ducey Biden and British Prime Minister discuss NATO and multilateralism during the call he reportedly pressured the Department of Justice (DOJ) to adopt his candidacy to overturn the results of the presidential election to the Supreme Court, but the effort reached a dead end after opposition from the direction of the agency.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump tried to get the DOJ to file a lawsuit to challenge the election result before he left office last week, but several senior agency officials refused to file the case. These officials reportedly included then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, a former attorney general William Barr
Bill BarrBudowsky: Democracy won, Trump lost, President Biden inaugurated Two-thirds say the election was fair: poll The Hill’s Morning Report – An inauguration like no other MORE and former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Wall.
The effort was also met with resistance from former White House councilor Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin, the former deputy director of the White House, the newspaper noted.
According to the newspaper, a lawyer working outside the administration drafted a writ at a time given by the effort.
“He wanted us, the United States, to sue one or more of the states directly in the Supreme Court,” a former administration official told the magazine. The official added that “the pressure became very intense” after the Supreme Court rejected an offer from Texas in early December that sought to nullify President Biden’s election victory.
The newspaper reported that Trump considered dismissing Rosen and replacing him with Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ lawyer, after the effort failed.
The Journal report came a day after the New York Times also reported that Trump planned to fire Rosen and replace him with Clark in efforts to nullify election results.
However, both newspapers reported that the effort failed after several senior department officials threatened to resign if Trump continued with the plan.
In a statement published last week in the Times, which spoke to four former Trump administration officials unidentified for their coverage, Clark withdrew the report.
“Lawyers from the Department of Higher Justice, not infrequently, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties,” he told the newspaper. “All my official communications were consistent with the law.”
He also noted his role last month as the main signatory of a DOJ request for a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to pressure then-Vice President Pence to annul the election result while Congress certified the vote of the Electoral College.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill at the time.