The Guardian Weekly

Trump told officials to ‘just say it was corrupt’

Donald Trump has insisted that when he told senior justice department officials to “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me”, he was not attempting to subvert US democracy, but to “uphold the integrity and honesty of elections and the sanctity of our vote”.

The former president’s restatement of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud came after Washington was rocked by news of his December call with acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue, a senior Department of Justice official.

Trump’s pressure on federal and state officials to overturn his national defeat and state losses to Biden has been well documented. Cases mounted by his campaign claiming electoral fraud were thrown out of court. But last Friday, the House oversight committee released memos taken by Donoghue regarding a call with Rosen on 27 December that brought Trump’s demand to light.

In a further blow to Trump, the DoJ ordered the Internal Revenue Service to hand the former president’s tax returns to a House committee, citing “sufficient reasons” for requesting them.

Global Report

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2021-08-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-08-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://theguardianweekly.pressreader.com/article/281646783185869

Guardian/Observer