“Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me,” the former president told former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, memos obtained by the House oversight committee showed.
The notes were taken by Donoghue, who documented a 27 December call with Trump and Rosen.
The documentation of Trump’s demand to the justice department represented an extraordinary instance of a president seeking to weaponise an agency that is supposed to operate independently of the White House, to advance his own personal interests and political agenda.
It is also the latest example of the far-reaching campaign mounted by Trump over the final weeks of his presidency to falsely cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden in a contest devoid of any widespread voter fraud.
