WASHINGTON, D.C. (NBC) – After an eight-month-long investigation, the Senate Judiciary Committee released its report on former President Trump’s attempt to pressure Department of Justice (DOJ) officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The 394-page report reveals how close the country came to a constitutional crisis.
According to the report, the former president tried to bully the DOJ to subvert the 2020 election results.
Acting Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, who backed Trump’s false claims of a rigged election, pressured his DOJ colleague’s to reverse Joe Biden’s victory.
The report outlines how Trump wanted to replace acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Clark, who came up with the strategy for the DOJ to intervene in Georgia’s appointment of presidential electors, and to use the strategy in other states to reverse the election results.
Rosen and then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, along with White House lawyers, rejected the idea and told the former president that they would all resign if he moved forward.
Based on the report’s findings, the committee has asked the D.C. Bar to start an investigation to see if Clark violated any rules of professional conduct by willingly participating in the scheme.
U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement on today’s report release: “Today’s report shows the American people just how close we came to a constitutional crisis. Thanks to a number of upstanding Americans in the Department of Justice, Donald Trump was unable to bend the Department to his will. But it was not due to a lack of effort. Donald Trump would have shredded the Constitution to stay in power. We must never allow this unprecedented abuse of power to happen again.”
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