参议院委员会周四发布的一份报告详细描述了前总统唐纳德·特朗普及其盟友试图利用司法部推翻2020年选举的新情况。
根据当时在DOJ高层任职的官员的新证词报告由参议院司法民主党人提供了迄今为止最全面的观察，包括新的和先前报道的特朗普在1月6日起义之前操纵的细节，以制造对他输给乔·拜登的怀疑。
1月3日，在椭圆形办公室的一次会议上，特朗普试图用一名忠诚者取代时任代理司法部长杰弗里·罗森(Jeffrey Rosen)的顽强努力遭到了惊人的抵制，这名忠诚者誓言将协助特朗普利用该部门调查2020年大选。
“特朗普在会议开始时说，‘我们知道的一件事是，罗森，你不会做任何事情来推翻选举，’”罗森作证说。
报道称，会议持续了大约三个小时，罗森和他当时的高级副手理查德·多诺霍告诉总统，如果他继续任命代理助理司法部长杰弗里·克拉克，他们和其他一批DOJ高级官员将集体辞职。
与会官员还讨论了克拉克提出的给佐治亚州政府官员写信的建议，此前由美国广播公司新闻报道敦促佐治亚州官员调查毫无根据的欺诈指控，并可能推翻乔·拜登总统在该州的胜利。
根据多诺霍的说法，当时白宫法律顾问帕特·西波隆和他的副手帕特里克·菲尔宾向特朗普明确表示，如果克拉克就职，他们也将辞职，西波隆将佐治亚州的信描述为一份“谋杀-自杀协议”，将“损害它触及的任何人和任何事。”
罗森和多诺霍都作证说，直到会议快结束时，总统才放松了安置克拉克并让他寄信的计划。
在该委员会少数派发布的另一份报告中，共和党参议员一再试图强调，特朗普从未真正完成迫使DOJ参与选举的各种计划，称特朗普“听取了他的顾问，包括DOJ高级官员和白宫法律顾问的意见，并遵循了他们的建议。”
民主党的报告还详细介绍了共和党众议员斯科特·佩里的努力。他带头反对在1月6日骚乱后计算宾夕法尼亚州的选举人票，向特朗普介绍杰弗里·克拉克，并就他所在州选民欺诈的虚假指控直接联系罗森的副手多诺霍。
参议院多数党委员会的报告在几个方面建议众议院1月6日的特别委员会利用其权力进一步调查其他几项类似的指控，这些指控涉及外部政党试图向DOJ施压，让其参与选举，包括直接呼吁对佩里的所谓努力进行更多调查。该报告可能有助于为1月6日委员会正在进行的调查提供路线图，该委员会最近几周加大了努力，迫使与总统关系密切的证人详细说明他们与总统的互动，导致了未遂的叛乱。
佩里和他的办公室没有立即回应美国广播公司新闻的置评请求。
委员会对罗森和多诺霍的采访记录显示，他们对特朗普和他的盟友一再联系他们调查选举欺诈的虚假指控感到明显不适，也对克拉克在幕后努力让司法部代表特朗普干预选举感到困惑。
罗森和他的幕僚长拒绝对参议院的报告发表评论。
正如美国广播公司新闻此前报道的那样，该委员会收到的电子邮件中，克拉克不仅试图向佐治亚州发送一封信的草稿，该信将提出毫无根据的选举欺诈指控，并敦促他们推迟对乔·拜登获胜的认证，而且他还提出了奇怪的阴谋论，称选举机器通过恒温器被黑客入侵，恒温器可能会以某种方式将投票系统连接到互联网。
“我很困惑，就像，杰夫·克拉克怎么了?”罗森告诉委员会。
作为周四报告的结果，参议院民主党人表示，他们已将案件正式提交给华盛顿特区律师协会纪律顾问办公室，以评估克拉克的行为。克拉克在此前针对其选举后行为的声明中否认了所有不当行为，目前仍在接受DOJ监察长办公室的调查。
Senate report describes Trump, allies' efforts to use DOJ to subvert 2020 election
A Senate committee report released Thursday detailed new instances where former President Donald Trump and his allies sought to use the Justice Department to over turn the 2020 election.
With new testimony from officials who served in the highest echelons of DOJ at the time, thereportby Senate Judiciary Democrats offers the most comprehensive look to date at both new and previously reported details of Trump's maneuvering in advance of the Jan. 6 insurrection to manufacture doubts about his loss to Joe Biden.
In previously unreleased details from a Jan. 3 meeting in the Oval Office, Trump's dogged efforts to try to replace then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with a loyalist who vowed he would assist Trump in using the department to investigate the 2020 election was met with a stunning show of resistance.
"Trump opened the meeting by saying, 'One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election,'" Rosen testified.
The meeting stretched for approximately three hours, the report says, and Rosen and his top deputy at the time, Richard Donoghue, told the president that if he followed through with installing acting Associate Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, they and a wave of other top DOJ officials would resign en masse.
The officials in the meeting also debated a proposal by Clark to send a letter to state officials in Georgia,previously reported by ABC News, that urged officials in Georgia to investigate unfounded claims of fraud and perhaps overturn President Joe Biden's victory in the state.
That's when, according to Donoghue, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy, Patrick Philbin, made clear to Trump they would also resign if Clark were installed, with Cipollone describing the Georgia letter as a "murder-suicide pact" that would "damage anyone and anything that it touches."
It wasn't until near the end of the meeting that the president relented on his plans to install Clark and have him send the letter, Rosen and Donoghue both testified.
In a separate report released by the minority side of the committee, Republican senators repeatedly sought to highlight that Trump never actually went through with the various plans to force DOJ to involve itself in the election, saying Trump "listened to his advisors, including high-level DOJ officials and White House Counsel and followed their recommendations."
The Democrats' report additionally details efforts by Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., who led the effort objecting to counting the Pennsylvania's electoral votes following the Jan. 6 riot, to introduce Jeffrey Clark to Trump and his direct outreach to Rosen's deputy Donoghue about false allegations of voter fraud in his state.
The Senate committee's majority report recommends in several areas that the House Jan. 6 select committee use its powers to further investigate several other similar allegations of outside parties seeking to pressure DOJ get involved in the election, including a direct call to investigate more about Perry's alleged efforts. The report could help provide a roadmap to the Jan. 6 committee's ongoing probe, which has ramped up efforts in recent weeks to compel witnesses close to the president to detail their interactions with him leading up to the attempted insurrection.
Perry and his office did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment.
Transcripts from the committee's interviews with both Rosen and Donoghue reveal their clear discomfort with Trump and his allies' repeated outreach to them to investigate false claims of election fraud, as well as their confusion over Clark's behind-the-scenes efforts to have the Justice Department intervene in the election on Trump's behalf.
Rosen and his chief of staff declined to comment on the Senate report.
As ABC News previously reported, the committee received emails in which Clark not only sought to send a draft of a letter to Georgia that would raise baseless claims of election fraud and urge them to delay certification of Joe Biden's victory, but he raised strange conspiracy theories about election machines being hacked through thermostats that could somehow connect the voting systems to the Internet.
"I was confused, as in, what's going on with Jeff Clark?" Rosen told the committee.
As a result of their report Thursday, Senate Democrats said they sent a formal referral to the D.C. Bar's Office of Disciplinary Counsel to evaluate Clark's conduct. Clark, who has denied all wrongdoing in previous statements addressing his post-election actions, remains under investigation by the DOJ inspector general's office.
