Trump’s chief of staff tried to get Justice Department to take up false election fraud claims, emails show

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Within Donald Trump’s final days in office, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sought to pressure the US Department of Justice to investigate election fraud conspiracy theories amplified by QAnon proponents.

In documents obtained by members of Congress and reviewed by The New York Times and CNN, Mr Meadows reportedly sent five emails in late December and early January to then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to investigate election fraud claims in Georgia and New Mexicos.

He also pressed Mr Rosen to investigate several debunked allegations, including a “theory” that Italian officials in coordination with Barack Obama and the CIA used military technology to manipulate US voting machines, a claim that circulated among QAnon-linked conspiracy theorists as a pro-Trump mob fuelled by the “stolen election” narrative breached the US Capitol.

In his request for the Justice Department to investigate the conspiracy theory, Mr Meadows emailed Mr Rosen a link to a YouTube video.

Mr Rosen did not agree to pursue investigations, according to emails reviewed by the outlets.

The documents – part of a Senate Judiciary Committee probe into the Justice Department’s efforts during Mr Trump’s campaign to reject millions of ballots cast in the 2020 election – appear to show the last-minute desperation among administration officials to validate the former president’s months-long effort to undermine the results.

“What my office found in our investigation is a five-alarm fire for democracy, underscoring the depths of the White House’s efforts to influence the electoral vote certification,” US Sen Dick Durbin said. “I will demand all evidence of Trump’s efforts to weaponize DOJ in his election subversion scheme.”

During an appearance before a House Oversight Committee hearing on 12 May to investigate the events leading up to and during the failed insurrection on 6 January, Mr Rosen refused to answer whether he discussed with the former president efforts to overturn or reject election results in the lead-up to the riots.

He confirmed that he met with Mr Trump on 3 January but said only that their conversation did “not relate to planning and preparations for the events of 6 January.”

“Respectfully I don’t think it’s my role here today to discuss communications with the president in the Oval Office or the White House,” he said, suggesting parallel investigations involving his former agency.

Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark and Mr Trump reportedly discussed removing Mr Rosen to use the agency to reject election results in Georgia, according to The New York Times.

Mr Rosen then reportedly sought a meeting with Mr Trump on 3 January, one day after the former president called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in an effort to pressure the state to pursue his false claims that Mr Trump received thousands of votes to win the state.

Mr Meadows was on that call. He also visited an in-progress vote audit in Cobb County, Georgia days before the call.

Asked whether he believes the election was “stolen” from Mr Trump, Mr Rosen said: “There was no evidence presented of widespread fraud of a sufficient scale to overturn the election.”

His predecessor, William Barr, also said that the Justice Department had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”