WASHINGTON (CN) — A series of handwritten notes published Friday reveal former President Donald Trump actively pressured the top most officials at the Department of Justice to proclaim publicly that the 2020 election results were fraudulent and to “leave the rest” to him and his allies in Congress.
Obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the notes were written by former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue during a phone call with Trump and then acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen on Dec. 27.
Both Rosen and Donoghue joined the department shortly after Attorney General William Barr abruptly resigned from the agency on Dec. 14.
More than 200 pages of emails already released by the committee this June demonstrate how Donoghue made repeated requests between December and January, at Trump’s behest, to officials at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania to look into instances of alleged election fraud.
Those emails also reveal that Donoghue contacted Steven Engel, the U.S. assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, for the same reasons. In Donoghue’s notes memorializing a Dec. 29 meeting, an abbreviation of “SE” could be Engel making another appearance.
Similar abbreviations appear to refer to other White House officials including “C of S,” believed to mean Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows and “WH Counsel (PC+PP).” That shorthand may refer to White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin.
By the time of Donoghue’s call with Trump on Dec. 27, the Justice Department had determined for three weeks at that point that no fraud had occurred.
But Trump was persistent.
According to Donoghue’s contemporaneous notes, Rosen asked Trump to understand that the department “cant + wont snap its fingers” [sic] to change the outcome of the election.
“Don’t expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressman,” Trump allegedly told Donoghue.
There is not a specific congressperson named in the notes in the context of that statement, but the records do show Trump later referring to Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a longtime ally, as a “fighter.”
Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, is also mentioned. Trump referred to Johnson as someone who was good at “getting to the bottom of things.”
House Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, and Pennsylvania state Senator Doug Mastriano are listed as well on the first page of the records released Friday but are not mentioned again.
Jordan, Johnson and Perry voted to overturn the election in January ahead of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The lawmakers did not return request for comment Friday.
Donoghue did push back on some of Trump’s requests but that prompted the former president to suggest the agency might need a shakeup.
“People tell me Jeff Clark is great. I should put him in. People want me to replace DOJ leadership,” Trump said, referring to Jeffrey Bossert Clark who Trump tapped to lead the DOJ’s civil division.
In small scrawl, Donoghue memorialized his response: “You should have the leadership you want,” but he added it “won’t change the dept’s position.”
Piling onto his pressure campaign, Trump also asked Donoghue to “figure out what to do” about Hunter Biden, whom Republicans have long sought to castigate as an ethical liability for his father, the now-President Joe Biden. Trump was impeached the first time for abuse of power and obstruction of congress after a whistleblower revealed that Trump, on a July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, pressed the foreign dignitary to investigate the Biden family for political dirt.
“Whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” Trump told Zelensky at the time.
According to Donoghue’s notes, Trump's desire to take down the Bidens was not close to being sated. Trump told him on Dec. 27: “You figure out what to do w/H.Biden — people will criticize the DOJ if he’s not investigated for real.”
The House Oversight Committee has been reviewing Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election since May and the scrutiny Trump once evaded during his single term has ramped up in recent weeks.
This week, the Justice Department issued letters to six former Trump officials including Rosen, Donoghue, Clark and former Deputy Attorney General Patrick Hovakimian, former U.S. Attorney B.J. Pak for the Northern District of Georgia and the district’s acting U.S. Attorney Bobby Christine.
In the letters, the officials were informed that they could be required to testify before lawmakers about the administration’s campaign to overturn the results of the U.S. election as well as the assault on the Capitol that followed on Jan. 6.
“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney said in a statement Thursday.
Maloney, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, and Senator Dick Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, both said on Friday that they are now beginning to schedule interviews with key witnesses.
“I will exercise every tool at my disposal to ensure all witness testimony is secured without delay,” Maloney said.
The inspector general at the Justice Department, Michael Horowitz, is also continuing to investigate whether former or current agency officials engaged in any attempt to alter the outcome of the election. That probe was announced in January.
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