“Pure Insanity”: Trump Pressured the DOJ to Investigate a Crackpot Theory That Italian Satellites Changed Trump Votes to Biden Ones

One of the things that makes Donald Trump a unique figure among U.S. presidents is that, in addition to basically being illiterate, he’s a rare combination of both corrupt as all get-out and batshit fucking crazy. For instance, while other one-term presidents might have had a difficult time accepting the loss, as far as we know, none of them believed they would be “reinstated“ at the White House months after their opponent was sworn in. To that end, there is no evidence that Bush, Carter, Pierce, Hoover, Taft, Harrison, Van Buren, or John Adams (or his son) invited their supporters to D.C. and encouraged them to sack the Capitol. And we can say with near-certainty that none of Trump’s fellow one-termers tried to get the Department of Justice to investigate a literally insane conspiracy theory that Italian satellites had altered ballots, as part of a campaign to get the agency to overturn the election. Which, yes, is a thing that actually happened.

According to documents released by the House Oversight Committee, which is probing the events leading up to January 6, between December 2020 and January 2021, Trump and his cronies repeatedly pressured DOJ officials to investigate absurd theories in the hopes of preventing Joe Biden from becoming president. On December 14 at 4:57 p.m., for instance, Trump’s assistant sent acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and DOJ official Richard Donoghue a document that claimed to show evidence of voter fraud in Michigan—which had been thrown out by a federal judge a week earlier. Two weeks later, per The New York Times, Trump sent another email to Rosen via his assistant that “included a draft of a brief that Mr. Trump wanted the Justice Department to file to the Supreme Court,” which argued, among other things, “that state officials had used the pandemic to weaken election security and pave the way for widespread election fraud.” Similar claims had also been thrown out by the court. During the same period, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was bombarding the Justice Department with equally ridiculous requests, including the one about Italian satellites.

Per CNN:

The emails also provide new detail into how Mark Meadows, then White House chief of staff, directed Rosen to have then Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark—who reportedly urged Trump to make him acting attorney general instead of Rosen—investigate voter-fraud issues in Georgia before the U.S. attorney there resigned in January. Amid the pressure, Rosen said he refused to speak to Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

When Meadows sought to have Rosen arrange an FBI meeting with a Giuliani ally pushing a conspiracy theory that Italy was using military technology and satellites to somehow change votes to Joe Biden, Rosen said he would not help Giuliani. “I flatly refused, said I would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his ‘witnesses,’ and re-affirmed yet again that I will not talk to Giuliani about any of this,” Rosen wrote to Donoghue.

Other emails show Meadows pressuring the DOJ to investigate the fraud claims of Trump allies like Cleta Mitchell, the attorney who assisted Trump on his call pressuring Georgia election officials to “find” him votes. In a January 1 message, Meadows wrote that there were “allegations of signature match anomalies” in Fulton County and demanded Rosen have someone “engage on this issue immediately to determine if there is any truth to this allegation.” Rosen, clearly annoyed by these missives, forwarded the email to Donoghue, adding, “Can you believe this? I am not going to respond to the message below.” After Meadows sent Rosen a YouTube link re: the Italian satellites, Rosen forwarded it on to Donoghue, who wrote back, “Pure insanity.”

As the Times notes, the brief Trump wanted the DOJ to file with the Supreme Court “mirrored” a lawsuit from Texas attorney general Ken Paxton that the court had already rejected. But that didn’t stop a Trump ally who seemingly became singularly obsessed with convincing Rosen to put the full weight of the DOJ behind the matter:

Eager to speak with Mr. Rosen about the draft Supreme Court lawsuit, a lawyer named Kurt Olsen, who had advised on Mr. Paxton’s effort, tried unsuccessfully to reach him multiple times, according to emails sent between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. on December 29 and obtained by the House Oversight Committee investigators. Mr. Olsen first reached out to Jeffrey B. Wall, the acting solicitor general who would have argued the brief before the Supreme Court. “Last night the President directed me to meet with AG Rosen today to discuss a similar action to be brought by the United States,” Mr. Olsen wrote. “I have not been able to reach him despite multiple calls/texts. This is an urgent matter.”

Mr. Rosen’s chief of staff, John S. Moran, told Mr. Olsen that the acting attorney general was busy with other business at the White House. About an hour later, Mr. Olsen drove from Maryland to Washington “in the hopes of meeting” with Mr. Rosen at the Justice Department, the emails show. When Mr. Olsen could not get through to Mr. Rosen or Mr. Moran, he called an employee in the department’s antitrust division, according to the documents. The emails do not make clear whether Mr. Olsen met with Mr. Rosen, but a person who discussed the matter with Mr. Rosen said that a meeting never occurred. Rather, Mr. Olsen eventually cold-called the official’s private cell phone and was politely rebuffed, the person said, requesting anonymity because the matter is part of an ongoing investigation. Mr. Olsen provided more fodder for his case in an email sent later that night to Mr. Moran, saying that it was at Mr. Rosen’s request.