[WATCH] Maddow Breaks Down How Trump Plot Revelations are Useful to Georgia Election Investigation
Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election results and declare himself the winner are being investigated by the Department of Justice’s inspector general, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Last week it was revealed that Jeffrey Clark, Trump’s acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, tried to get DOJ leaders to falsely claim that investigations into voter fraud in Georgia cast doubt on the Electoral College results. It was also reported that Clark had plotted with Trump to oust the acting attorney general, replace him with Clark, and use the Justice Department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.
Trump was misusing the DOJ all along, and when his own attempts to get the FBI to investigate election and voter fraud claims–something it doesn’t typically do, then-Attorney General Bill Barr issued a memo on November 9th authorizing federal prosecutors across the country to investigate allegations of fraud connected to the election.
FBI deputy director David Bowdich also expressed concerns with Barr’s direction, writing in an email to deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue, “This is putting us in a bad spot.”
Former Acting AG Rosen Tells Senators Trump was "Persistent" in Pressuring DOJ Officials to Discredit Results of 2020 Election. #JusticeMatters https://t.co/T62XBiDE9B via @YouTube
— Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) August 13, 2021
Things took another turn in mid-December when Trump announced that Barr would be resigning. The attorney general had been on the chopping block for months, and the final straw came when he told reporters that, contrary to Trump’s claims, the DOJ had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election. Barr was replaced by acting attorney general Jeff Rosen, who shared Donoghue’s qualms with Trump’s repeated demands that the DOJ must announce that the election was rigged and interfere with the certification in battleground states that Joe Biden won.
A criminal investigation by DOJ into Trump’s ongoing efforts to overturn the election by any means at his disposal is now absolutely imperative. NOT conducting such an investigation would be inexcusable. https://t.co/n2HEJAwyqr
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) August 11, 2021
Rachel Maddow reported Friday that a source close to the Fulton County, Georgia D.A.’s criminal investigation of Donald Trump for election interference says that the latest revelations about Trump’s plot with Jeffrey Clark to overturn the results in Georgia are “relevant and useful” to that investigation. Check out the full segment, below.