[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 177 (Thursday, October 7, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6951-S6952]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               ELECTIONS

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, today, the Senate Judiciary Committee 
released a report after an investigation of the circumstances 
surrounding Donald Trump's efforts to take over the Justice Department 
during the closing days of the last calendar year and beginning of this 
year.
  Since January, the Committee has investigated reports that White 
House officials, including the President himself, pressed the 
Department of Justice to support President Trump's unsubstantiated bids 
to overturn the 2020 election results, and that Acting Civil Division 
Assistant AG Jeffrey Clark aided in that effort.
  Today's interim staff report sheds new light on former President 
Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Jeffrey Clark 
became Donald Trump's Big Lie lawyer, pressuring his colleagues in the 
Department of Justice to force an overturn of the 2020 election.
  Let me put this in perspective. The election was in November. The 
results were announced. Most of the world accepted it, but the former 
President, Donald Trump, never did. He filed a succession of lawsuits 
to prove that the election had been stolen. He failed in every effort 
in court. That was stage one.
  Having failed in court with some of the most outlandish theories 
imaginable, but considered normal for the likes of Rudy Giuliani, they 
went into the second phase. The second phase was to coerce the 
Department of Justice and the Attorney General to intervene in the 
election results and to reach out directly, as the President did 
himself personally, to the election officials in States where he 
thought he should have won but he didn't.
  So all that effort was under way when William Barr, President Trump's 
Attorney General at the time, issued a statement saying there was no 
evidence of widespread fraud in the election. That was disappointing to 
the President.
  It occurred that in the middle of December of last year, William 
Barr, the Attorney General, announced that he was going to resign as of 
December 23. A man was chosen as the Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey 
Rosen, and Richard Donoghue as Deputy Attorney General.
  There was a full court press on at that time by President Trump and 
his supporters to influence Jeffrey Rosen into intervening into this 
election contest. When I say ``full court press,'' I am talking about 
repeated telephone calls and meetings in the White House over a period 
of 2 weeks.
  This report, which we have brought to the attention of the public, as 
well as members of the Committee, obviously, went into detail as to 
what happened during that 2-week period of time. It was an incredible 
moment, which most Americans didn't even know was going on. We were a 
half step away from a full-blown constitutional crisis because what the 
President was trying to do was to convince the Attorney General to 
contact the leaders in the States where he thought--the President 
thought he had won the election and to tell them to not certify the 
results and to pick an alternative set of electors in some instances.
  In each of these cases, the President was--President Trump--pushing a 
theory on why he actually won. These theories went from crazy to silly, 
to outlandish.
  Let me give you one of them. It was called Italy-gate. I hope you 
caught this one because, naturally, Rudy Giuliani was somehow involved 
with this--some notion that Italian satellites were intercepting the 
voting machines in America and changing the results against Donald 
Trump. That is the nature of things.
  In the State of Georgia, the President and his supporters were 
arguing that they have videotapes proving that people brought in 
suitcases full of ballots, and they showed these videotapes. The 
election officials in Georgia--which, I might add, all Republican--
countered that by saying that those were actual containers of ballots 
and that was the ordinary process; there was nothing sinister going on 
there.
  State after State, case after case, Trump was making the argument 
that he was cheated out of the election--which, of course, was false, 
but he still believes it to this day--and putting the pressure on 
Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to be complicit in this plot. He 
even asked him to consider filing a special case in the Supreme Court 
across the street to stop the election results from being certified.
  Our report shows that Jeffrey Rosen and his Deputy, Richard Donoghue, 
resisted this from the start. Jeffrey Clark, another Assistant Attorney 
General in the Civil Division who had nothing, literally, to do with 
this matter on a legal basis, were in conflict from that point--Clark, 
on the side of Trump, saying that the letters to the States should be 
issued, and Rosen and Donoghue arguing that there was no basis in fact, 
no proof of election fraud that could warrant that kind of 
unprecedented action.
  In the meantime, many other players, like Mark Meadows in the White 
House, were also pressuring the Department of Justice. The net result 
of it was a fateful day--I believe it was January 3 of this year--when 
the President called Rosen, Donoghue, and Clark to the White House to 
pursue his effort to replace Rosen with Clark, a more complicit person 
in the process.
  At that moment, two things happened that were significant. The White 
House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, dissented from the President's position 
and said it was a murder-suicide pact for him to engage in this. 
Secondly, at that point, the eight leading officials in the Department 
of Justice all said that they would resign en masse if there was a 
replacement of the Acting Attorney General by Mr. Clark.
  The President hesitated and decided at the very last minute not to 
pursue that course, not to replace him. That was significant, I will 
tell you, because had it happened otherwise, there would have been a 
possibility that there would have been a contest on the election 
results.
  What did the President do next after deciding that? Well, just for 
good measure, he ended up forcing the resignation of the U.S. attorney 
in Georgia who refused to buy his outlandish claims. It was the 
President's way of protesting that particular U.S. attorney's--Mr. 
Cox--independence in the situation.
  What followed? We know what followed. In a matter of 3 days, this 
President, former President, desperate in his situation, having failed 
in every court case, having failed to take over the Department of 
Justice, decided to take his cause to the streets. We saw it in the 
U.S. Capitol 3 days later on January 6. The President turned loose a 
mob--a mob that was supposed to stop us from counting the electoral 
votes and electoral ballots.
  Most people say: Well, we heard most of this story before, so what is 
the point of it? The point of it is that we were so close to a 
constitutional crisis at that moment that it bears continued 
investigation and disclosure so the

[[Page S6952]]

American people know that we should never be complacent when it comes 
to our rights as citizens and to our responsibilities to our 
Constitution.
  This President, former President Donald Trump, would have shredded 
the Constitution to keep his office in the Presidency. There is no 
doubt in my mind.
  To think that we reached that stage in history is certainly worth 
reflection for a moment. What more should we do going forward to make 
certain that we protect this democracy from the likes of Donald Trump 
or any of his successors in interest? That, I think, is a major 
responsibility that we face.
  I hope this report from the Senate Judiciary Committee will reopen 
the conversation. I hope as well that the select committee of the House 
on the January 6 occurrence, the mob insurrection here at the Capitol--
we submitted this evidence to them. I hope it is a benefit to them as 
they move forward.
  I certainly hope that, on a bipartisan basis, we can decide that the 
ordinary course of action with a valid, legal election deciding the 
future of this country is always the best route in a democracy.

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