In his repeated efforts to undermine the victory of President Joe Biden, Donald Trump pushed Justice Department attorneys to go directly to the US Supreme Court to invalidated the results of the election and designate Trump the winner, the Wall Street Journal reports.
His directives to DoJ lawyers were met with significant pushback from appointees within the department, who found his arguments legally dubious and his claims of election fraud fallacious. These efforts included threatening to oust acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and replace him with a lower-ranked DoJ attorney, Jeffrey Clark, who was more supportive of Trump’s claims.
“He wanted us, the United States, to sue one or more of the states directly in the Supreme Court,” a former administration official said. “The pressure got really intense[.]”
Before and after Election Day, Trump repeatedly said to aides and rally crowds the election would end up being decided the Supreme Court. It was a significant talking point for Republicans as they pushed the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett through the Senate.
A case brought to the Supreme Court by Texas against Georgia election officials found that Texas had no standing in the courts.
Former attorney general Bill Barr consulted with former solicitor general Jeffrey Wall to determine the viability of Trump’s plan to take cases against four swing states to the Supreme Court. Wall told Barr the cases had little chances of success, which led Barr to tell Trump that his exercises in the judicial system would be fruitless.
Based on his conversations with Wall, Barr also informed Republican officials that the Department of Justice could not support Trump in election matters before the Supreme Court if they sought to pursue the matter.
Barr resigned abruptly just before Christmas, and Trump pleaded his case with then acting attorney general Rosen, who also turned Trump down. Trump then found a potential advocate in Clark.
“My practice is to rely on sworn testimony to assess disputed factual claims,” Mr. Clark said in a statement sent to The Journal. “There were no ‘maneuver[s].’ There was a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president. It is unfortunate that those who were part of a privileged legal conversation would comment in public about such internal deliberations, while also distorting any discussions.…Observing legal privileges, which I will adhere to even if others will not, prevents me from divulging specifics regarding the conversation.”