WASHINGTON — Top Justice Department officials and White House lawyers made clear to then-President Donald Trump in early January that they would all resign from the administration if Trump replaced his acting attorney general with an ally who had been pushing his effort to overturn the 2020 election.
That’s according to a nearly 400-page report released Thursday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which provides a detailed timeline of Trump’s campaign to pressure DOJ officials to help him try to reverse Joe Biden’s victory. The report’s findings are based on testimony from three former DOJ officials as well as documents and emails.
The report outlines that Trump wanted to replace acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, the then-acting head of the department’s civil division, who devised a strategy with the president for the DOJ to intervene in Georgia’s appointment of presidential electors and to use this model in other states. Rosen and then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, however, rejected Clark’s proposal.
These efforts led to a Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting that Trump held for two to three hours with senior DOJ officials and White House officials. “According to Rosen, Trump opened the meeting by saying, ‘One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election,’” the Senate report said.
