‘Pure insanity’: emails show Trump attempt to pressure Justice Department to overturn election

Name: China mocks the US as Beijing compares chaos at Capitol with Hong Kong protests
Uploaded: 2021-06-16T00:54:08.000Z
Duration: 3 min 23 s
Description: China mocks the US as Beijing compares chaos at Capitol with Hong Kong protests

Donald Trump cited conspiracy theories to pressure the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election results

But its leaders refused, with one decrying the ‘pure insanity’ of the claims, documents released on Tuesday showed

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Donald Trump speaks to his supporters on the day of the Capitol attack, January 6. File photo: TNS

Tribune News Service

Published: 8:54am, 16 Jun 2021Updated: 9:02am, 16 Jun 2021

Former US President Donald Trump repeatedly pressured the Justice Department to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, at one point urging prosecutors to file a Supreme Court lawsuit to nullify the election, according to new emails released by the House Oversight Committee.

The emails from Trump and his aides during the last weeks of his presidency revealed bogus claims of fraud and conspiracy theories to win then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen’s support, prompting outrage from Rosen’s deputy.

“Pure insanity,” wrote then-Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, after receiving a YouTube link from Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows about a theory involving Italian spies.

Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat, called the 232-page report a smoking gun that proves Trump wanted to block certification of Biden’s win – a campaign that eventually led to the January 6 storming of the Capitol.

“Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” said Maloney.

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China mocks the US as Beijing compares chaos at Capitol with Hong Kong protests

The emails cited debunked claims of voter fraud in various swing states and outlandish claims spouted by far right-wing conspiracy theorists that Italy used military satellites to switch votes to Biden.

Maloney said the new documents prove the necessity of forcing officials like Meadows, Rosen and former attorney general Bill Barr to testify under oath about Trump’s and their own actions.