Newly released emails that show Trump pressured DOJ

June 16, 2021: -On Tuesday, in his final days in office, then-President Donald Trump pressured top Department of Justice officials to challenge as he lost his election to Joe Biden, the House Oversight Committee said. The oversight panel said a cache of above 200 pages of released emails from Justice Department officials and White House staff sheds new light on the way Trump tried to undermine the 2020 election results and advance unsupported voter fraud claims with the “apparent goal” of keeping himself in the power.

The documents say that Trump in December pressed the Justice Department to file a Supreme Court lawsuit to nullify the election among the other allegations, the Committee added.

The dump of new materials came hours before the Oversight Committee was set to hold its second hearing on the deadly January 6 Capitol invasion.

“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,” Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said in a press release.

“Those who aided or witnessed President Trump’s unlawful actions can be answered the questions of the committee about this attempted subversion of democracy.

My Committee is committed to ensuring that the events leading to the violent January 6 insurrection are investigated,” Maloney said.

The Committee said it has also requested transcribed interviews with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and four Justice Department officials.

The Committee said it obtained the emails after sending a May 21 letter to the DOJ while requesting documents related to Trump’s “efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election” before the January 6 attack.

The emails, which range from mid-December up to the days before the Capitol invasion, show the way Trump, his White House aides, and his outside allies pressured DOJ officials repeatedly, the Committee said.

On December 14, for instance, assistant of Trump emailed the Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen of that time, a raft of attachments which claims an election “Cover-up” was taking place in Michigan, the panel says.

According to the Committee, an assistant for Richard Donoghue, then the principal associate deputy attorney general, sent the same information to two U.S. Attorneys’ offices in Michigan after some minutes.

Nearly 40 minutes after the first email was sent, Trump wrote in a tweet that Rosen would be replaced Attorney General William Barr in an acting capacity and that Donoghue would serve as acting deputy attorney general.

That announcement was made after the Electoral College voted to formalize Biden’s victory over Trump.