'Pure insanity': Emails reveal DOJ's shock as Trump tried to overturn election

Emails released on Tuesday reveal just how far former President Donald Trump went to pressure the Department of Justice to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden, with everyone from Trump’s personal assistant to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows contacting top Justice Department officials to ask it to back up Trump’s wild lies about voter fraud and even file lawsuits to invalidate the results of multiple states.

The emails were part of a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which found that multiple top Trump aides and allies reached out to then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen asking him to file a lawsuit with the Supreme Court to overturn the results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada — all states Biden won.

Another email showed that Meadows tried to push Rosen to “look into” baseless and absurd allegations from an ally of Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani that Italy used military technology to switch votes from Trump to Biden. And yet another email revealed that Meadows sought to force Rosen to look into “allegations of signature match anomalies in Fulton County, Ga.”

The emails show Rosen was aghast at the pressure campaign.

“Can you believe this? I am not going to respond to the message below,” Rosen wrote in an email to acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue of Meadow’s demand that Rosen “engage” with the signature mismatch lie.

Rosen also said he “flatly refused” to meet with the Giuliani ally who was pushing the absurd Italy conspiracy theory, stating he “would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his ‘witnesses,’ and re-affirmed yet again that I will not talk to Giuliani about any of this.”

Donoghue called the efforts from the White House and other Trump aides to get them to aid in the effort to overturn the election “pure insanity.”

Ultimately, the Department of Justice never filed any lawsuits to overturn the election.

And the band of crackpot Trump supporters who did file lawsuits — such as Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Lin Wood — all lost their lawsuits seeking to overturn the results. In fact, Giuliani and Powell now face libel lawsuits from voting machine companies that could put them in financial ruin. Powell also faces the possibility of court-ordered sanctions.

House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney wrote in a news release that the emails provide proof that Trump engaged in “a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost.”

“Those who aided or witnessed President Trump’s unlawful actions must answer the Committee’s questions about this attempted subversion of democracy,” Maloney (D-NY) wrote.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.