NYT: Trump wanted to oust Acting AG and force Georgia to overturn results

[servermsh]

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.

EDIT: Adding a bit more from the story

The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?

The answer was unanimous. They would resign.

Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/us/politics/jeffrey-clark-trump-justice-department-election.html

EDIT: The reporter on this story is coming up after the commercial break on Chris Hayes on MSNBC

[malaise]

1. Get thee to the greatest page

Lock up this criminal

[spooky3]

2. Dear Senate: Convict this insurrectionist now. nt

[tblue37]

3. K&R for visibility. nt

[electric_blue68]

4. Worse and WORSE!!! 😠😠😠🤬🤬🤬🤬

[hibbing]

18. Always, from day 1 n/t

[dalton99a]

5. This POS Jeffrey Clark needs to be investigated

As Mr. Trump focused increasingly on Georgia, a state he lost narrowly to Mr. Biden, he complained to Justice Department leaders that the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, Byung J. Pak, was not trying to find evidence for false election claims pushed by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and others. Mr. Donoghue warned Mr. Pak that the president was now fixated on his office, and that it might not be tenable for him to continue to lead it, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

That conversation and Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him votes compelled Mr. Pak to abruptly resign this month.

Mr. Clark was also focused on Georgia. He drafted a letter that he wanted Mr. Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators that wrongly said that the Justice Department was investigating accusations of voter fraud in their state, and that they should move to void Mr. Biden’s win there.

Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue again rejected Mr. Clark’s proposal.

On New Year’s Eve, the trio met to discuss Mr. Clark’s refusal to hew to the department’s conclusion that the election results were valid. Mr. Donoghue flatly told Mr. Clark that what he was doing was wrong. The next day, Mr. Clark told Mr. Rosen — who had mentored him while they worked together at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis — that he was going to discuss his strategy to the president early the next week, just before Congress was set to certify Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.

Unbeknown to the acting attorney general, Mr. Clark’s timeline moved up. He met with Mr. Trump over the weekend, then informed Mr. Rosen midday on Sunday that the president intended to replace him with Mr. Clark, who could then try to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results. He said that Mr. Rosen could stay on as his deputy attorney general, leaving Mr. Rosen speechless.

Unwilling to step down without a fight, Mr. Rosen said that he needed to hear straight from Mr. Trump and worked with the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, to convene a meeting for early that evening.

Even as Mr. Clark’s pronouncement was sinking in, stunning news broke out of Georgia: State officials had recorded an hourlong call, published by The Washington Post, during which Mr. Trump pressured them to manufacture enough votes to declare him the victor. As the fallout from the recording ricocheted through Washington, the president’s desperate bid to change the outcome in Georgia came into sharp focus.

[Fiendish Thingy]

11. Good evidence for the impeachment trial- hope they subpoena them all. Nt

[Ford_Prefect]

36. This!!!

[OAITW r.2.0]

6. Maybe not a bad idea to slow walk the Treason....

Everyday more evidence of same is released.

[choie]

7. Where do these criminal hacks come from?

"As December wore on, Mr. Clark mentioned to Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue that he spent a lot of time reading on the internet —"

The internet.

[Fiendish Thingy]

8. Not mentioned: firing Rosen wouldn't force Raffensberger to change the results

What was the logic behind this?

[thenelm1]

28. No logic whatsoever - dump truly never had a clue as to how the Constitution or...

any facet of government actually worked. He is actually that monumentally stupid to think that somehow being pres allowed him to do whatever he eff'in pleased. JHC pubbies, you continue to want to attach your wagons and futures to this monumental fool? Let's face it, the only reason some of this crazy never saw the light of day until now was that he still had some advisers & lawyers around him that knew better - though that they do a 25th on him long ago should be forever to their shame.

[Bluethroughu]

9. What about Lindsey Graham's interference???

He called to shake down the Secretary of State in Georgia, I bet he was in on it or helped with the plans conception after the SOS didn't go with the program. Plan B, Then when rump called the SOS, he taped it because no one would believe this, for the last shake down that didn't work. Plan C, push AG out.

Little Lindsey should resign.

[subterranean]

10. The question is why? Biden would still have won even without Georgia.

Was it simply to avoid the humiliation of being the first Republican to lose Georgia since 1980? Or was he hoping to overturn a couple of other states as well?

[ret5hd]

13. Hoping to start a domino effect.

[WA-03 Democrat]

20. Agree +1000

[Marcuse]

17. Ego. Trump felt entitled to their loyalty. The refusal to find votes enraged him.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

38. I'll maintain, to the day I die, we would have been in far worse trouble if the election came down..

.... to one state, Pennsylvania, like many thought it would.

With one state to focus on, the propaganda could have been much more effective. With more moral “cover” we may have seen more serious legal weight behind the lawsuits instead of the bumbling Rudy circus.

Arizona and Georgia saved our asses.

[BelieveCassandra]

45. Georgia, then Pennsylvania, and Arizona?

We may find out that other states were pressured to change the results.

[subterranean]

48. Could be.

Those states would have been long shots for him to overturn though, because they both have Democratic secretaries of state and Pa. also has a Democratic governor. I guess Trump thought Georgia's Sec. of State would be easier to corrupt because he's a Republican.

[Eugene]

12. All In with Chris Hayes is covering this right now.

[turtleblossom]

14. The longer they push back the senate impeachment trial, the more evidence will come out

[Azathoth]

15. Anyone who says "the system held" is kidding themselves

The only reason the DOJ did not attempt to overrturn the Constitution was because a handful of men who were only 95% loyal to Trump understood his deformed psychology well enough to successfully talk him out of the plan.

That's not a structural "check and balance." That's a stroke of luck due solely to the fact that Trump was so cognitively impaired and incompetent that he wasn't able to install lackeys that were 100% loyal.

Trump has definitively proved that the only thing standing between us and Turkey is the lack of a Republican fascist that is competent enough to make it happen.

[NoMoreRepugs]

16. This.

[H2O Man]

23. Valid point.

[malaise]

37. Yes and No

People are part of the system - it is those with integrity decency and commitment to the COnstitution and law and order that keeps it going. On the other hand laws and rules need to be more explicit.

[WheelWalker]

41. I agree with you. There is no "system", no government,

apart from the individuals comprising the "system", the government.

[Pepsidog]

29. Yep. Exactly. Some scary shit.

[Turin_C3PO]

42. Valid points

but the judicial branch held very well, even from Trump-appointed judges.

[Azathoth]

51. The judicial branch held because there was no serious attempt to use it

to stage the coup.

Rudy and Powell's dog and pony show was just that: a clown act for the cameras, not the courts. The running joke was that they were making their accusations everywhere except in the actual court filings. The lawsuits were amateurish and empty and gave judges -- even friendly judges -- nothing to hang their hats on.

The Texas AG lawsuit was really the only serious attempt to overrturn the election in the courts, and it also was little more than an empty PR gesture.

All of that would have been different if Trump had had competent, professional lawyers in the DOJ using the Department's full resources to pursue serious litigation to overrturn the results. They would have constructed enough specious arguments, and filed enough lawsuits, that eventually they would have crossed paths with a Trumper judge who felt comfortable going along with them. (Otherwise known as the Obamacare Strategy.) And then our democracy really would have come down to Boofer Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett Handmaid.

And while those two idiots were deciding whether they wanted to be remembered by history as the guys who appointed Hitler chancellor a second time, the DOJ would have already leaned on swing states and given the GOP legislatures there enough cover to throw out the results.

[SayItLoud]

19. The more the biggest GOP donors learn maybe just maybe they will put pressure on GOP.

IMPEACH tRUMP

[ailsagirl]

21. It simply boggles the mind

[Midnight Writer]

22. If this impeachment fails, this behavior will become the norm for Republican Presidents.

[H2O Man]

24. Recommended.

Terrible.

[oldsoftie]

25. Its so stupid. GA's votes still wouldnt have given him the win

[badboy67]

26. Could you do me a favor ... ?

[canetoad]

27. Kick

Rachel starting on this right now.

[tonekat]

30. So Moscow Mitch wants more time

...for the defense to prepare. Fine, this and probably more evidence of treason will surface while they're doing that.

[Joinfortmill]

31. If the Senate doesn't convict Trump

They will go down in infamy.

[Larissa]

33. Criminally pathological

Trump has spent all these weeks harassing, stalking, threatening and putting the squeeze on public officials to fix the vote in his favor. No doubt other shoes will drop on this rat fu@ker. The person Trump shot in the middle of Fifth Avenue turned out to be himself. Trump cannot ever be allowed to run for public office again. Ever.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

35. + about a million.

[question everything]

34. Still confusing to me. Even if they succeeded to reverse GA, Biden would still have more

Electoral votes,,

[kirby]

39. Domino effect...

If Georgia decided on a scheme to overturn the will of the voters, then Trump and his enablers could have pressured other close states. The Republican legislators in those other states may have used Georgia as an excuse for their own schemes.

[sarcasmo]

52. Trump's new AG would have pressured Arizona and Pennsylvania.

[Nitram]

40. Trump never has and never will understand the most fundamental notions of democratic government or

the laws and constitutional guarantees that guide it. The AG has no power to overturn election results in any state. Attempting to do so would make the AG and the president who ordered him to do so a laughingstock.

[BobTheSubgenius]

43. I wonder how anyone can be "stunned" by any revelations arising from this?

I wouldn't think that anything about be off the table, up to and including murder. I have nothing on which to base that last conjecture, but the main point is - would anyone be surprised?

[yonder]

46. Jeff Epstein probably wasn't surprised.

Maybe even expected it.

[BobTheSubgenius]

54. You are probably right.

He certainly couldn't have thought that his life was safe.

[BSdetect]

44. k&r

[bucolic_frolic]

47. I worry about sleepers left behind in the executive branch bureaucracy

Trump has shifted, fired, appointed personnel at will for 4 long years.

[wnylib]

50. So do I. This isn't over, even if Trump

Last edited Sat Jan 23, 2021, 11:12 PM - Edit history (1)

gets convicted. Too many people involved who are still in position to do harm.

[secondwind]

49. KnR

[burrowowl]

53. Thank God dump et al are not the sharpest knives in the drawer

what is scary is the number of people and the system allowing dull knives to rule.