Biden faces an uncomfortable furor: New evidence detailing how former President Donald Trump and a top Justice Department official attempted to use the nation’s top law enforcement agency to bolster blatant lies about the 2020 election hints at some potentially uncomfortable moments in the future of the Biden administration.
Biden faces uncomfortable future in wake of latest Trump revelations
According to documents released by the House Oversight and Reform Committee late last month, Trump attempted to overturn his defeat to now-President Joe Biden by convincing top Justice Department officials to publicly declare that the 2020 election was “corrupt.”
This effort was to give his allies in Congress a reason to vote against certifying Biden’s victory.
Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen also recently told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and DOJ Inspector General investigators that one of his former deputies, Jeffrey Clark, had been strategizing with Trump on how to use the DOJ to his advantage.
The plan was to encourage legislatures in contested states to ignore the results of the popular vote and send electoral votes in Trump’s favor to be counted in lieu of the true results, Rosen said.
Clark – who was then the acting assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division – allegedly pressured Rosen and then-acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Donohue to announce investigations into nonexistent voter fraud claims that the department had already examined and rejected.
The actions Trump and the Justice Department took in the days between his defeat to Biden and the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and are currently the subject of multiple investigations.
These investigations are being conducted by a group of congressional committees – including a select committee of the U.S.
House of Representatives – and the DOJ’s internal watchdog. Until now, the inquiries have kept the Biden administration and Attorney General Merrick Garland out of the politically fraught business of investigating Biden’s predecessor.
But the new revelations have experts worried that neither Garland nor Biden will be able to stay out of it.
So far, Biden has taken pains not to comment on matters he believes are in Garland’s purview, particularly those related to possible criminal investigations.
