Trump ‘pressed’ Justice Dept to overturn 2020 election results

WASHINGTON, June 15

Documents released by a US congressional panel on Tuesday revealed new details of how then-President Donald Trump tried to mobilise the Justice Department last year to join his failed effort to overturn his election defeat based on his false claims of voting fraud.

Bid rebuffed

The US Justice Department did not join then President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn his poll defeat.

The House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee, which sought the records, outlined a series of overtures made by the Republican former president, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and an outside private attorney, Kurt Olsen, pushing the department to act on Trump's claims.

The department ultimately did not join the effort and numerous courts rejected lawsuits seeking to overturn election results in various states. The Congress is investigating the deadly January 6 assault on the US Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters trying to stop the formal certification of Democratic President Joe Biden's election victory.

“These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” said Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat.

These overtures were separate from the revelations that the Trump-era Justice Department secretly sought the phone records of at least two Democratic lawmakers, a move that led Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday to vow to strengthen policies aiming to protect the department from political influence. — Reuters