‘Just say the election was corrupt’: New DOJ memos show there’s more to learn about Trump and Jan. 6 – By Dan Balz (The Washington Post) / July 31 2021
WASHINGTON – Republicans in Congress have dismissed the need for an investigation into what happened on Jan. 6 and in the days and weeks before the Capitol was overrun. They claim there’s nothing of value left to learn. However, new revelations about former president Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election show there is likely much more that still needs unearthing.
For months, Trump has been on a political jihad. It began the night of the election and has never ended. The latest disclosures offer a reminder that it was the president himself who was doing the most to corrupt the election results. The House select committee and other investigations are one way to begin to hold him more accountable.
These revelations are from notes kept by then-acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue, top aide to then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, including a conversation the two men had with Trump on Dec. 27. The documents were provided by the Justice Department to Congress and released publicly on Friday.
Post journalists Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey had reported on Wednesday the existence of the notes, describing Trump as in regular, almost daily, contact with DOJ officials as he pressed them to investigate and prove various (false) claims of election irregularities. In that Dec. 27 conversation, Trump was told that the information he had about fraud claims was not accurate. Trump replied, according to the notes: “You guys may not be following the Internet the way I do.”
