The House Jan 6 Committee released these bombshell notes today from then Acting Deputy AG Richard Donoghue, notes taken during a phone call from trump to Acting AG Jeffrey Rosen on Dec 27, 2020. NYTimes and WaPo are running stories, analyzing the handwritten notes, their importance and the possible consequences.
Here is the most damning statement made by trump, towards the middle of the notes, after Jeffrey Rosen told Trump — "understand that the DOJ can’t & won’t snap its fingers & change the outcome of the election, doesn’t work that way”, to which trump responded —
Don’t expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt & leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.
Just say that the election was corrupt. Just like that. No evidence needed. Do as I, the mob boss, says.
This is corruption personified, corruption at the highest level, corruption which might not be unexpected from trump, but this goes beyond the pale. This is what congressional republicans are protecting trump from. They knew, they know, they are co-conspirators. They had plans to overturn the election. The insurrection was planned. Nothing was accidental. They failed, but they have not given up yet.
This is what the notes look like -
The 9 pages of notes contain a lot of statements by trump about election fraud and pressuring Rosen to take action to help overturn the election, while Rosen pushes back because there was no evidence to back up the allegations.
Here are some other revealing statements from the notes -
- Sir we have done dozens of investig., hundreds of interviews, major allegations are not supported by evid. developed.
- We look at allegations but they dont pan out
- We are doing our job, much of the information you are getting is false
- E.g., MI, report says 68% error rate, but reality is it was .0063% error rate
- trump: OK fine — but what about the others?
- You guys may not be following the Internet the way I do
- People are angry and blaming DOJ + for inaction.
- People tell me Jeff Clark is great, I should put him in. People want me to replace DOJ leadership (ed. note: this was a threat to replace Rosen)
- FBI will always say nothing there. Leaders there oppose me.
Hopefully, readers here will decipher the hand scribbled notes and post their findings here.
Philip Bump at www.washingtonpost.com/… writes
What Donoghue’s notes suggest is that Trump had fully bought into the effort that would eventually become his Alamo: having Republican legislators block the electoral-vote counting due to take place at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
It hasn’t been clear, though, how closely the White House worked with those legislators in anticipation of the day. There have been hints for some time that members of Congress were in contact with the organizers of a protest at the Capitol that day, with one leader of that effort identifying Brooks and two others by name as having “schemed” with him about how to put “maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.” But what about the days before? What, if anything, was the strategy for blocking the electoral votes beyond the objections that actually occurred? How closely was Trump involved in the effort?
Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s blunt words -
The presence of these notes was known earlier. It was well known that trump called acting AG Rosen nearly every day at the end of last year to bug him about claimed voter fraud and alleged improper vote counts. It was expected that Donoghue’s notes would be turned over to Congress, if Trump did not file papers in court seeking to block such a handover.
In addition, both Rosen and Donoghue (among others) might be questioned about the conversations by the committee.
Epilogue
There is probably lot more that we do not know. There must have been many more phone calls and discussions with cabinet members and lawmakers on the hill. Does anyone have notes or tapes of conversations between trump and AG William Barr before Barr resigned? Hopefully, the House committee will ferret it out some of this information and some good patriots in the DOJ and other agencies will be willing to speak up or leak the details.
Is Rosen a hero here? What would have happened if he had succumbed to trump’s pressure? Is he willing to spill the beans now?
This may be news to us, but is it to members of Congress, the White House and the DOJ? What other bombshells are they sitting on? How deep does the GOP corruption go?
Where this will end is difficult to say. Congressional Democrats seem to be doing a good job uncovering the dastardly acts on Jan 6 and now they are also uncovering the planning that went behind closed doors in the days before the insurrection. We are in uncharted waters, more so because there are no republicans left (except maybe two) who want the nation to know the truth, perhaps because they themselves are complicit.
What do you think will happen in the hearings and investigations in the days ahead? Are congressional Democrats up to the task? What new shenanigans will trump and hooligans employ? How will this end? Will trump be indicted of crimes or will he escape one more time?