Election

Trump Pressed Justice Department About Alleged Michigan Vote Fraud, Emails Show

June 15, 2021, 12:12 PM by  Allan Lengel

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President Trump in Muskegon

Last December, more than a month after the election, an aide to President Donald Trump sent an email to the soon-to-be Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen listing concerns about alleged irregularities in Antrim County results from northern Michigan.

The Washington Post reports

The file included a forensic analysis of the Dominion Voting Systems machines the county employed, alleging they were “intentionally and purposefully” calibrated to create fraudulent results, and “talking points” that could be used to counter any arguments “against us."

“It’s indicative of what the machines can and did do to move votes,” the document Trump sent to Rosen reads. “We believe it has happened everywhere.”

The claims were false.

The Justice Department also forwarded documents claiming Antrim voter fraud via email to the U.S. Attorneys in Detroit and Grand Rapids, CNN says.

The messages were in a batch released Tuesday by Democrats in the House Oversight Committee in Washington. They show many attempts by Trump and his minions to pressure the Justice Department to investigate alleged widen fraud that was never proven.

It also shows, The Post writes, how Trump tried influencing Rosen just before he replaced William Barr as attorney general. Rosen continually resisted pressure by the White House to launch a formal investigation into voter fraud. 


Email to then-U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider

Detroit U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider, who got an email from the Attorney General's office on Dec. 14 with talking points about voter fraud in Antrim County, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday morning. Schneider is now a private attorney with the Detroit law firm, Honigman. 

Last month, an Antrim judge dismissed an election-fraud lawsuit that alleged Dominion Voting Systems machines switched votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, an unproven conspiracy theory. The suit sought an audit of Michigan's election results, even though the Secretary of State's office already conducted over 250 audits around the state.  

Another email released Tuesday showed that on Dec. 29, White House assistant Michael Molly sent Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue an attachment of a draft of a Supreme Court filing alleging election fraud in states, including Michigan.

"The president asked me to send the attached draft document for your review. I have also shared with Mark Meadows and Pat Cipollone. If you'd like to discuss with POTUS, the best way to reach him in the next few days is through the operators: 202-456-1414."

The Supreme Court document stated: "The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in four of the Defendant States -- Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- independently given President Trump's early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000."

CNN reports that when Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, tried to have Rosen arrange a meeting with the FBI and Rudy Giuliani about voter fraud, Rosen refused.

"I ... said I would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his 'witnesses,' and re-affirmed yet again that I will not talk to Giuliani about any of this," Rosen wrote in an email to Donoghue of the Justice Department.

In January, Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, reportedly tried convincing Trump to let him replace Rosen so he could pursue Trump's allegations of voter fraud. But The New York Times reports that Trump declined after learning that there would be mass resignations at Justice if that happened. 

► See the emails


Read more:  The Washington Post


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