The actions Donald Trump took out in the open in an effort to hang onto power following his loss to Joe Biden were bad enough—a stress test for American democracy that the country may have only narrowly passed, if it’s even over. But those brazen public measures were, of course, only the tip of the autocratic iceberg, and in the months since he left office we’ve continued to learn more and more about the relentless scheming he and his allies engaged in behind the scenes in an effort to overturn the election.
The latest revelations come via a Senate report released Thursday, which details the former president’s efforts to use the Department of Justice to undermine Biden’s victory. According to “Subverting Justice,” a nearly 400-page report by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Trump and his cronies, including then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and figures linked to the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, repeatedly pressured the DOJ to support and investigate his bogus election fraud claims—and retaliated against those in the department seen as not doing enough to lend legitimacy to the lies. Rather than maintain the department’s independence, the report concludes, then-Attorney General William Barr “weakened” it by “pursuing false claims of election fraud before votes were certified.” Perhaps most disturbingly, one DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, actively worked on Trump’s behalf to subvert the results, including by pressing his superiors to falsely tell Georgia election leaders that the DOJ had “taken notice” of voting irregularities and to repeat this so-called “Proof of Concept” scam in “each relevant state”—that is, swing states key to Biden’s victory.
“Today’s interim staff report sheds new light on former President Donald Trump’s efforts to co-opt the Department of Justice into helping overturn the 2020 election,” Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in remarks on the floor Thursday morning. “We were a half-step away from a full-blown constitutional crisis.”
The report is in keeping both with Trump’s public actions to overturn his loss, which played out on his manic Twitter feed and reckless remarks—including inciting the January 6 mob—and revelations about the desperate measures he resorted to behind closed doors. But the report also adds details, including about Trump’s attempts to install Clark as his attorney general to advance his power grab, that underscore how over-the-top the former president’s efforts to steal the election were—and how they could’ve worked.
“We were so close to a constitutional crisis at that moment that it bears continued investigation and disclosure so the American people know we should never be complacent when it comes to our rights as citizens and to our responsibilities to our constitution,” said Durbin, who also called on the D.C. bar to investigate Clark. “Former President Donald Trump would’ve shredded the constitution to keep his office in the presidency,” the Illinois Democrat continued on the Senate floor. “There’s no doubt in my mind. And to think that we have reached that stage in history is certainly worth reflection for a moment: What more should we do going forward to make certain that we protect this democracy from the likes of Donald Trump?”
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