Say it was corrupt
President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times.
In other words he “pressed” them (meaning bullied, screamed at, threatened them) to lie about the election to enable him to steal it.
The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda.
Not to mention of a president trying to bully an agency to steal an election and install a dictator. I think the Times’s language is a good deal too cool and restrained here.
They are also the latest example of Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.
And steal the election.
The exchange unfolded during a phone call on Dec. 27 in which Mr. Trump pressed the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and his deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, on voter fraud claims that the department had disproved. Mr. Donoghue warned that the department had no power to change the outcome of the election. Mr. Trump replied that he did not expect that, according to notes Mr. Donoghue took memorializing the conversation.
“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, Mr. Donoghue wrote in summarizing Mr. Trump’s response.
“Just get him to come to the restaurant and leave the rest to me.”
The Justice Department provided Mr. Donoghue’s notes to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is investigating the Trump administration’s efforts to unlawfully reverse the election results.
To steal the election and install a dictator.
“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement.
That’s more like it.
Well … Trump isn’t wrong.
The election was rigged and corruption was rampant. Gerrymandering, voter roll culls, removal of voting stations from liberal districts, ID laws that favor conservatives (student IDs don’t count but concealed carry permits do) , and dismantling of nail sorting machines to delay mail-in ballots were all designed to skew the vote and Trump win. And all those are just the tip of the iceberg.
Top-to-bottom and wall-to-wall at every stage and location there were GOP operatives ready, willing and able to put their fingers on the scales. And they took unfair advantage every chance they got.
Trump isn’t mad that the election was rigged. He is mad that it wasn’t rigged enough for him to win.