Trump pressed Justice to probe election fraud claims

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s staff began sending emails to Jeffrey Rosen, the No. 2 at the Justice Department, asking him to embrace Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election at least 10 days before Rosen assumed the role of acting attorney general, according to new emails disclosed by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in advance of a hearing to probe the causes of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

On the same day as the electoral college met to certify the election results — which was also the day Trump announced that William Barr would be stepping down as attorney general — his assistant sent Rosen an email with a list of complaints concerning the way the election had been carried out in Antrim County, Mich.

The file included a so-called forensic analysis of the Dominion Voting Systems machines the county employed, alleging they were “intentionally and purposefully” calibrated to create fraudulent results. It also included “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, based on a report compiled by Allied Security Operations Group, a company led by a Republican businessman who pushed baseless allegations that the 2020 election was stolen.

The email — one of several previously undisclosed records released by the Oversight Committee Tuesday morning — sheds light on the type of pressure Trump was putting on the Justice Department to take up his crusade against Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

It also shows how Trump was attempting to influence Rosen before he stepped into the top role at the DOJ, where he would come under continued pressure from the White House to launch a formal investigation into the integrity of the 2020 election — pressure he resisted — in advance of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

A lawyer for Rosen did not immediately return a request for comment.

The email about Antrim County was sent by the White House to Rosen shortly before 5 p.m. Dec. 14. Two minutes later, a Justice Department official forwarded the materials to the U.S. attorneys for the Eastern and Western districts of Michigan, according to the documents released by the House Oversight Committee.

Trump and his allies were focused on Antrim County because of an error not long after polls closed caused the county to briefly report that Biden was leading Trump in the heavily Republican area.

Election officials quickly established that the issue was caused by human error, saying a clerk’s failure to update software just before the election was responsible for the incorrect tally, which was rapidly updated to reflect Trump’s victory. Still, a local resident filed suit and a judge in early December ordered that Texas-based Allied Security Operations Group be given access to the county’s voting machines to analyze on the resident’s behalf.

ASOG produced a report that asserted a vast conspiracy to rig the election. But an expert analysis of the report conducted on behalf of Michigan’s attorney general and secretary of state — as well as multiple reviews by other experts in recent months — found ASOG’s work was riddled with inaccuracies. And a subsequent hand recount of the Antrim’s ballots confirmed the county’s voting machines had tabulated results correctly.

The campaign to have Rosen take up Trump’s cause swiftly accelerated once he was appointed acting attorney general, according to the emails the committee disclosed. On Dec. 30, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows forwarded Rosen a petition from attorney Cleta Mitchell alleging voter fraud in Georgia, asking him point-blank: “Can you have your team look into these allegations of wrongdoing. Only the alleged fraduluent activity.”

Mitchell, who also participated in a call in which Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” to help Trump win, later resigned from her law firm after it said it was concerned she played a role in the conversation.