The Justice Department inspector general announced today he has officially opened an investigation into whether officials at the department tried to overturn the election results.
Michael Horowitz said in a statement that the probe will look into ‘whether any former or current DOJ official engaged in an improper attempt to have DOJ seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election.’
The two paragraph statement was released days after a New York Times bombshell report Friday revealed that Donald Trump, while still president, plotted to replace then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen will Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark – an ultra-loyalist.
The plan, according to sources, was to get someone at the helm of the department who wanted to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia, an initiative in which Rosen did not agree.
Horowitz made sure to draw a line by clarifying that the investigation will not extend to any other government officials.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded over the weekend that Horowitz probe the matter.
‘Unconscionable a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people’s will,’ the New York Democrat tweeted Saturday afternoon.
‘The Justice Dept Inspector General must launch an investigation into this attempted sedition now,’ he continued. ‘And the Senate will move forward with Trump’s impeachment trial.’
Schumer, who recently was elevated form minority leader to majority leader, also announced Saturday that an impeachment trial against Trump will commence February 9 in the upper chamber before a vote is held on whether to convict the former president.
Rosen, who took over after Bill Barr resigned at the end of December, repeatedly rebuffed Trump’s insistence that action be taken to overturn the election results in Georgia – where Joe Biden won by a tiny margin.
On the other hand, Clark was on board with the plan to get the results in the southern swing state flipped.
Several insiders told the Times that the scheme came to a screeching halt when DOJ officials said they would all resign if Rosen was ousted before Trump’s term ended.
Trump, during his final month in office, pushed Rosen to appoint special counsels, including one who would look into Dominion Voting Systems – an election machinery company.
Following the November 3 election, Trump and his supporters accused Dominion of switching votes cast for Trump to register as votes cast for Biden.
Trump was already working with Clark to try to overturn the Georgia vote, which went 49.5 per cent for Biden and 49.3 per cent from Trump – only a 0.2 per cent margin.
Overturning Georgia’s 16 Electoral College votes would not make Trump the automatic victor of the 2020 presidential election.
But his legal team felt if just one state’s results were brought into question and successfully overturned, it could create a domino effect where other states’ results, which cost Trump the election, could come into question, too.
The former president went as far as staging an ‘Apprentice-style’ interview with Clark and Rosen, with both men arguing to have the job, according to the Times report.
Clark, who resigned from the DOJ Jan. 14, is now ‘radioactive’ to future potential employers, Bloomberg reported, as law firms become increasingly aware of the hits they would take to their reputation in hiring the form Trump administration official.
When word reached other Justice Department officials of the plan to replace Rosen with Clark, and throw the presidential election into turmoil, they all agreed to resign en masse.
Steven Engel, the head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel, held a January 3 phone call with the shocked senior officials, and told them of Clark’s plan.
Trump, concerned at the fallout from the mass resignation, then backed down, after a three hour meeting.
Clark was nominated by Trump to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD), and sworn into office on November 1, 2018.
In September he also asked Clark to be the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division.
Clark, who graduated from the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware in 1993), followed by the Georgetown University Law Center, told the paper that he had in no way acted improperly.
‘Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommonly, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties.
‘All my official communications were consistent with law.’
Trump declined to comment.