And finally, the flood of shocking new disclosures means that a potential new Trump White House campaign in 2024 would have the most serious implications for American democracy in decades. Given Trump’s record of impunity, a new administration could be filled with loyalists who would not balk at abuses of power – such as his efforts to overturn the election, which were blocked this time around by officials from the Ministry of the United Nations. Justice and states led by the GOP. .
“Scary” maneuvers at Trump’s Justice Department.
The latest evidence of Trump’s undemocratic lie was filed Friday and Saturday before the Senate Judiciary Committee by two former senior Justice Department officials.
Another Democrat, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, told CNN’s Manu Raju that after hearing testimony from former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen on Saturday, he was struck by “how close the country is of total disaster “earlier this year.
Rosen and the other official – Richard Donoghue, then acting deputy attorney general – put another Trump-appointed official, Jeffrey Clark, at the center of an effort to help the then president undermine the election results and potentially oust Clark’s bosses who resisted Trump’s efforts.
A familiar source said the testimony provided new details about a January 3 White House meeting in which Trump did indeed audition Rosen and Clark for the position of acting attorney general. The president ultimately decided not to replace Rosen with Clark. Rosen and Donoghue both said Trump did not order them to do anything illegal and ultimately agreed that the Justice Department could not invoke electoral fraud when there was no evidence that this had happened.
Durbin told CNN’s Dana Bash he couldn’t comment on the details of the testimony yet but there would be a report. He also said he would like Clark to testify about his role. Clark’s attorney declined to comment on CNN.
The Illinois senator said he was surprised “at how directly and personally the president was involved, the pressure he was putting on Jeffrey Rosen.” He added: “It was real, very real. And it was very specific. This president is not subtle when he wants something, the former president. He is not subtle when he wants something. “
Asked by Bash whether Trump tried to get Rosen to overturn the election results, Durbin replied, “It wasn’t that blunt, but he was asking him to do some things related to the state election results, this which he refused to do. “
“The White House, the leaders of the White House, asked him to meet with some people who had these crazy and bizarre theories as to why this election was not valid. And he refused to do so,” said President.
Durbin praised Rosen for his steadfastness against the ex-president’s undemocratic ploys and presented a scenario surrounding the resignation of ex-Attorney General William Barr that Trump envisioned that mirrored the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” of the Watergate scandal.
“The president was looking for the green light from an attorney general. Bill Barr got to a point where he couldn’t do it anymore. And Rosen stepped in, and he wasn’t ready to do it. And the president said,” we’ll find another one, ”Durbin said, apparently referring to Clark.
A timeline of blatant abuses of power
The disclosures came just days after it emerged that notes written by Donoghue about a December 2020 appeal show the ex-president pressured Rosen to say the election was fraudulent in an attempt to help Republican members of Congress reverse Biden’s victory.
The shocking revelations of recent weeks come as Trump appears to at least be setting the stage for a future presidential campaign. The former president has already severely damaged confidence in the electoral system by convincing millions of his supporters that he has been swindled from power in free and fair elections that he clearly lost.
And the failure of the Republican Party to allow consequences for its assault on democracy – and the efforts of many of its lawmakers and media propagandists to erase history and invent a completely new reality of the events surrounding the January 6 insurgency. – are effectively clearing the way for its political rehabilitation.
The latest developments have also undermined the arguments of Republican senators who were unwilling to condemn the ex-president in his second impeachment trial earlier this year for the Capitol uprising. The idea that the process was pointless since Trump was no longer in power and could no longer do harm is now contradicted by evidence of his strongman behavior and attempts to rebuild his political career.
That a candidate guilty of such blatant abuse of power and endowed with such autocratic and undemocratic impulses is a viable prospect for the presidential nomination of one of America’s major political parties is a commentary on the extraordinary current state of politics. . It also means that whether or not he shows up, Trump’s legacy of epic political corruption will pose a serious threat to democratic traditions that most people considered invulnerable to challenge.
