then president United States of americahandjob Donald Trump, late last year pressured the US Justice Department to declare that the election was “corrupt” although there were no cases of widespread fraud, revealed this Friday (30) newspaper “The New York Times”.
Trump intended to use the statement, along with his allies in Congress, to try to reverse the defeat suffered by the current US president, Joe Biden. The newspaper says it published the information based on documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by reporter Katie Benner.
The Justice Department distributed the documents The House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is investigating the Trump administration’s efforts to illegally reverse election results.
During a phone call on December 27, 2020, Trump reportedly asked then-Interim Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen and his deputy Richard P. Donoghue over allegations of electoral fraud, which were dismissed by the department. (see below).
In the US, the Attorney General has the equivalent of the positions of Minister of Justice of the Republic and Attorney General in Brazil.
According to the newspaper, Donoghue warned that the Justice Department has no authority to change the election results.. Trump responded that he did not expect it, according to notes the deputy attorney general called for the conversation to be recalled, but said:
Summarizing Trump’s response, the deputy attorney general wrote, “Suffice it to say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R Congressmen.” R will be the abbreviation for Republican Party.
no evidence of fraud
Weeks earlier, then-US Attorney General William Barr said that The Justice Department found no evidence of election fraud (watch video below).
Barr said that “An investigation by federal prosecutors and FBI agents found no evidence of widespread electoral fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election.”.
Head of US Justice Department says no evidence of fraud that would change election
Barr resigned a few days after the statement and before Trump’s phone call. He was replaced by Jeffrey Rosen, who held the position on an interim basis until the end of the government on January 20 of this year – including Trump supporters attack the Capitol.
John Schaefer among supporters of Donald Trump during the Capitol invasion. — Photo: Roberto Schmidt / AFP
The NYT writes, “The demands were an exceptional example of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent than the White House.” “They are the latest example of Trump’s broad campaign, during his final weeks in office, to make the election illegal.”
The then US President refused to accept defeat in the election and Claimed that Biden “won because of election rigging”. Trump claimed a “corrupt election” and unsuccessfully tried to reverse his defeat in several states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania..
In its investigation of the elections, the US Department of Justice found that:
- The vote counting error rate in Michigan was 0.0063%, not the 68% that Trump claimed;
- There was no evidence that the conspiracy theory that a Pennsylvania official had tampered with ballots was true;
- After examining a video and interviewing witnesses, the department found no evidence of electoral fraud in Fulton County, Georgia.
“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly directed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to reverse a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” said Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York. The woman in Congress who chairs the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
