Donald Trump left the White House in January, yet the ruling Democrats cannot resist putting the boot in, releasing 232 pages of documents detailing the unprecedented pressure the one-term former President and his allies applied to the US Justice Department to investigate the allegedly fraudulent 2020 election.
In one frightening example, Mr Trump directed sham claims of voter fraud to then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen less than an hour before Mr Trump tweeted that Attorney General William Barr – who publicly stated that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud – would be stepping down and replaced by Mr Rosen.
The emails also highlighted multiple theories surrounding election fraud pushed by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. On 30 December, Mr Meadows emailed Rosen a translation of a document that alleged there was a plot in which US election data was altered in Italian facilities and loaded onto “military satellites” and that Mr Trump was “clearly the winner”.
After Mr Meadows sent Mr Rosen a YouTube link on 1 January detailing the theory, Mr Rosen forwarded the email to then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, who replied: “Pure insanity”.
The documents also revealed that Mr Meadows emailed Mr Rosen multiple times to share allegations of election fraud or to ask him to take steps to change the election results.
Mr Trump used official White House channels, along with a private attorney, to hound the Justice Department to file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court with the aim of having the court declare that the Electoral College vote counts in six states that Trump lost could not be tallied.
The draft complaint — circulated by Trump’s White House assistant to Mr Rosen, Richard Donoghue and Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall — requested that the court order a “special election”” for president in those six states.
Let’s be thankful we live in Australia and this nonsense has not reached our shores.
