"Pure Insanity!"

Santa Fe NM

Description

WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) - Former President Donald Trump pressed the Justice Department during his waning weeks in office to join his failed effort to overturn his election defeat based on his false claims of voting fraud, but its leaders refused, with one decrying the "pure insanity" of the claims, documents released on Tuesday showed. The records, obtained by the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee, provided new insight into the actions of the Republican former president in trying to enlist the department to act on his claims. The documents showed a series of overtures made by Trump, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and an outside private attorney, Kurt Olsen. The department ultimately did not join the effort and numerous courts rejected lawsuits seeking to overturn election results in various states. Congress also is investigating the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters trying to stop the formal certification of Democratic President Joe Biden's election victory. "These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation's chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost," said Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat. These actions were separate from the revelations that the Trump-era Justice Department secretly sought the phone records of at least two Democratic lawmakers, a move that led Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday to vow to strengthen policies aiming to protect the department from political influence. The department under outgoing Attorney General William Barr, who left his post on Dec. 23, and his short-term replacement Jeffrey Rosen decided not to act on the false claims of voting fraud. Biden took office on Jan. 20. The emails showed that Meadows asked Justice Department officials to investigate an unfounded conspiracy theory called "Italygate" alleging that U.S. electoral data was changed in Italian facilities with the knowledge of the CIA. On Jan. 1, Meadows sent Rosen a link to a YouTube video detailing the theory. Rosen forwarded the email to then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, who replied: "Pure insanity." This is Trump's own man calling it, PURE INSANITY!