Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Would a real billionaire need to run scams to steal money from his gullible followers? The answer is NO!

Trump is running a 'shadow campaign' so he can use super PAC money like 'a giant slush fund'

Donald Trump is running a "shadow campaign" for president in 2024 so that he can skirt campaign finance laws by using money from his super PACs to finance his travel, MAGA rallies and other activities — and possibly inject money into his own pockets.

"As long as Trump doesn't explicitly announce he's running for president, he can essentially raise as much money as he wants from whomever he wants, and spend it unfettered by the restrictions or transparency requirements imposed upon actual candidates," Rolling Stone reported Tuesday.

Fred Wertheimer of the reform nonprofit Democracy 21 told the magazine, "The way to look at the super PAC is as a giant slush fund for Trump to do whatever he wants with."

The report blames Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell for blocking campaign finance reform, in part by installing Don McGahn — who would later serve as a Trump administration lawyer — as an FEC commissioner in 2008. Other presidential candidates who've taken advantage of the super PAC loophole include Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio — "but there are few entities in the history of humankind who are more keen to exploit lax financial oversight than Donald Trump," the report states.

"It's unclear exactly if and to what extent Trump will use this potential pre-campaign campaign to enrich himself personally," Rolling Stone reported. "He has at every step found ways to funnel money into his own pockets, toeing the line of what's legal and bulldozing past any ethical considerations."

Nick Penniman, CEO of the political reform group Issue One, said: "The opportunity for self-dealing with leadership PACs is really extraordinary. [They] are pretty much used for lifestyle. If, for instance, Trump were to hold some kind of an event at Mar-a-Lago, he could 'reimburse' that event out of his leadership PAC. This could very well end up just being a way for him to inject money into Trump, Inc."

Rolling Stone reported that Trump's "burgeoning shadow campaign, complete with media appearances and rallies and public displays of dominance over his competitors, is the loudest siren yet that Trump is very much not gone, and neither is his unfathomably brazen corruption."

According to Penniman, "All of that crossing of lines between politics, business, and public life is going to come roaring back like acne. All this stuff that we just cringed at is just going to be happening again."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-shadow-campaign/

[Rick Plant]

Another corrupt Trump henchman taking money for personal use. He should be forced to pay it all back. All these slimy Republicans all look the same.

Trump official billed US for $456,000 in private jets over five months



New information is coming out about the use of private jets by Tom Price, the former Georgia congressman who spent eight months as Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2017.

"Tom Price, the health and human services secretary, resigned under pressure... after racking up at least $400,000 in travel bills for chartered flights and undermining President Trump's promise to drain the swamp of a corrupt and entitled capital," The New York Times reported at the time. "Already in trouble with Mr. Trump for months of unsuccessful efforts to repeal and replace President Barack Obama's health care program, Mr. Price failed to defuse the president's anger by offering regret and a partial reimbursement."

A Freedom of Information Act request was filed by The Washington Post and the new emails the newspaper obtained shed light on how the scandal began.

It started in April of 2017, only four months after Price took over the department. Price's staffers sought to fly him to Los Angeles after his Delta Air Lines flight was delayed due to bad weather.

"Officials quickly secured a $29,000 charter flight — which also had to be scuttled, as tornadoes plagued the D.C. region. But the day's events left a scar on Price's top aides, who vowed that the Trump Cabinet official would never again wait on a commercial airline's schedule, and foreshadowed a five-month travel sprint in which the health department spent $456,000 in taxpayer money on Price's charter flights across the United States," the newspaper reported.

In one case, Price did not even need to fly at all, much less on a private jet.

"One of the final trips came in September 2017, when health officials chartered a jet for Price, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and their aides to fly round trip between Washington and Philadelphia — at a cost of $14,955 to taxpayers, according to government records," The Post reported. "The department's Office of Inspector General later concluded that Price's flight to Philadelphia wasted more than $10,000 in taxpayer money compared with flying commercial, and that he could have made the trip by train."

Prior to joining the Trump administration, Price spent a dozen years in Congress and chaired the House Budget Committee.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/06/tom-price-hhs-charter-jets/

[Rick Plant]

President Biden is building back better and fixing the damage Criminal Donald caused. President Biden is the greatest jobs President in history. No other President has created this many jobs at this record pace.

Latest Economic Report Shows Joe Biden’s Economy Surging Ahead

According to a new report from the payroll processing company ADP, a substantial number of new hires were made across the economy in September, hitting a higher-than-expected rate of expansions of payrolls. According to the company, some 568,000 private jobs were added in September, which is over 100,000 jobs ahead of the Dow Jones estimate from economists that just 425,000 private jobs would be added for the month.

CNBC notes that these latest jobs numbers emerged “amid concerns about how fast hiring would grow considering ongoing fears over the delta spread and signs that the brisk economic growth of 2021 was beginning to slow heading into autumn, particularly due to supply chain bottlenecks that have driven inflation sharply higher.” Since hiring has continued, surpassing expectations, the Biden administration’s approach to COVID-19 and related issues appears to be paying off. Specifically, 226,000 of the new jobs were added in the leisure and hospitality sector, while goods producers were also high on the list of sectors with new jobs, adding 102,000 in September, according to the ADP report.

The ADP report can be significantly different from jobs reports for the same time period from the Labor Department — but according to CNBC, the difference is often that the ADP findings sit below numbers from federal officials. As the outlet put it, “Through August, the ADP count of private payrolls had undershot the government’s tally by an average 37,000 per month.” Thus, with the high numbers from ADP, there should be reason for optimism about the impending September report from the Labor Department, which is set to be released on Friday. Before Biden won the presidency and took office, predictions abounded — including from former President Trump himself — that a Biden administration would mean economic ruin for the United States. These predictions have not turned into reality.

Presently, Democratic leaders are promoting two government spending pushes, including an infrastructure bill and a bill involving federal financial support for what’s been termed “human infrastructure,” meaning child care, care for elders, and the like. Both pieces of legislation essentially amount to jobs bills, supporting the creation of significant numbers of accessible jobs throughout the country for initiatives like the expansion of broadband internet service in rural communities and more.

https://bipartisanreport.com/2021/10/06/latest-economic-report-shows-joe-bidens-economy-surging-ahead/


September private payrolls rose by 568,000, topping estimates: ADP

U.S. private employers added back more jobs than expected in September as COVID-19 cases moderated from a summer peak and alleviated some stress on the labor market.

Private payrolls grew by 568,000 last month, ADP said in its closely watched monthly report on Wednesday. Economists were looking for private payrolls to grow by 430,000, according to Bloomberg consensus data. During the prior month, private-sector jobs had risen by 340,000. This figure was downwardly revised from the 374,000 previously reported for August.

Wednesday's report reflected an acceleration in hiring in the U.S. services sector, with 466,000 net payrolls coming back last month. The biggest contributor to this figure, in turn, came from leisure and hospitality industries, with employers across these firms adding back 226,000 jobs. Job gains in education and health services, and professional and business services, each also came in above 60,000.

The goods-producing sector also saw a strong pick-up in hiring, with payroll gains rising by 102,000 to more than double the number of jobs brought back in August. Manufacturing and construction jobs each rose by nearly 50,000.

Wednesday's report marked a ninth consecutive month of private payroll growth in the U.S. economy, with the labor market making strides to recoup jobs lost over the course of the pandemic. Other reports have also underscored some firming trends in domestic employment: Both the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing and service sector employment indexes held in expansionary territory in September, and weekly unemployment claims dropped to a pandemic-era low at the start of the month.

"Bottom line, labor demand remains exceptionally strong, and with COVID cases seemingly to have peaked early last month, we expect the pace of hiring to have come more in line with its recent trend," Sam Bullard, senior economist for Wells Fargo Corporate and Investment Banking, wrote in a note.

ADP's private payrolls report also sets the tone for the Labor Department's "official" September jobs report on Friday. In that report, economists are expecting to see an acceleration in payroll gains after a sharply disappointing August jobs report, when just 235,000 jobs returned versus the more than 700,000 expected at the time. The consensus estimate for non-farm payrolls gains in September is 488,000.

Many economists have warned that ADP's report does not serve as a precise indicator of payroll trends seen in the government data due to differences in methodology. ADP counts active employees on company payrolls toward its headline figure, while the Labor Department counts those paid during the survey period towards its non-farm payrolls increase or decrease.

One of the biggest discrepancies between the ADP private payrolls report and Labor Department jobs report last month was over service sector job growth. ADP reported that 201,000 leisure and hospitality jobs came back in August, whereas the Bureau of Labor Statistics' report reflected zero.

"We would not be surprised to see the BLS revise its August estimate for this sector, which despite last month's pause accounted for 51% of the roughly 4.1 million private-sector job gains year-to-date," Deutsche Bank senior U.S. economist Brett Ryan wrote in a note.

The Labor Department is set to report its monthly jobs report Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET.

https://news.yahoo.com/adp-private-payrolls-september-2021-employment-labor-market-coronavirus-121614244.html

[Richard Smith]

Bizarrely, Biden has start having public events in a fake studio built in the Executive office building built to make it look like he is in the White House.  You can't make that up.  He is the president but they built a fake WH set! He even has fake windows with a digital monitor to make it appear that the Rose garden is outside.  HA HA HA.  Why?  Because he has to read directly off a monitor.  His cognitive impairment has reached such a stage that his advisors don't trust him to speak from the White House.  It's like a kid's doll house and Old Joe is a creepy uncle who has come over for tea.  Unreal.  Meanwhile, Biden's poll numbers are hitting rock bottom in the aftermath of a multitude of disasters:

Biden’s approval rating has dropped to 38%, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

“Battered on trust, doubted on leadership, and challenged on overall competency, President Biden is being hammered on all sides as his approval rating continues its downward slide" Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a prepared statement

[Rick Plant]

It's time to arrest Criminal Donald and his henchmen.

REVEALED: Trump pushed so-called 'murder-suicide pact' to 'shred Constitution' in Oval Office meeting

A report from the Senate Judiciary Committee reveals new details about former president Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

During an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 3, Trump pushed to install a loyalist as acting attorney general who would conduct additional investigations into his false claims of widespread election fraud, according to the New York Times.

In response, several top Department of Justice officials threatened to resign en masse if Trump went through with the plan. White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone also threatened to resign and said his top deputy, Patrick F. Philbin, would step down, too.

"Mr. Trump's proposed plan, Mr. Cipollone argued, would be a 'murder-suicide pact,' one participant recalled. Only near the end of the nearly three-hour meeting did Mr. Trump relent and agree to drop his threat," the Times reports.

The Senate committee's report provides the "most complete account yet of Mr. Trump's efforts to push the department to validate election fraud claims that had been disproved by the F.B.I. and state investigators," according to the Times.

"The interim report, expected to be released publicly this week, describes how Justice Department officials scrambled to stave off a series of events during a period when Mr. Trump was getting advice about blocking certification of the election from a lawyer he had first seen on television and the president's actions were so unsettling that his top general and the House speaker discussed the nuclear chain of command," the Times reports.

Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, who chairs the committee, issued a statement saying the report suggests Trump would have "shredded the Constitution to stay in power."

"This report shows the American people just how close we came to a constitutional crisis," Durbin said. "Thanks to a number of upstanding Americans in the Department of Justice, Donald Trump was unable to bend the department to his will. But it was not due to a lack of effort."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/us/politics/trump-election-fraud-report.html

[Rick Plant]

'Stunning distortion of DOJ’s authority': Here are 6 key findings in Senate Judiciary's report on Trump election interference

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has released a sweeping report detailing how former President Donald Trump and a former high-ranking lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The Democratic-led committee's 394-page document contains intricate details about the former president's actions in the days after the presidential election was called for President Joe Biden. A number of bombshell claims were revealed in the report and ⁠— here are six key takeaways from it.

1. "President Trump repeatedly asked DOJ leadership to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to assist his efforts to overturn the election results."

The report reveals Trump asked the Justice Department for assistance in overturning the election a total of nine times. The call history includes details about who Trump spoke with along with dates those calls took place.

December 15, 2020 – Oval Office meeting including incoming Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (both men assumed office when William Barr left on Dec. 23)

December 23, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call

December 24, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call

December 27, 2020 – Trump-Rosen-Donoghue Call

December 28, 2020 – Trump-Donoghue Call

December 30, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call

December 31, 2020 – Oval Office meeting including Rosen and Donoghue

January 3, 2021 – Oval Office meeting including Rosen and Donoghue

January 3, 2021 – Trump-Donoghue Call

2. "White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked Acting Attorney General Rosen to initiate election fraud investigations on multiple occasions, violating longstanding restrictions on White House-DOJ communications about specific law enforcement matters."

Between December 29 and January 1, Meadows pushed for Rosen to open an investigation into "at least four categories of false election fraud claims" being circulated by Trump, his campaign team, legal team and other allies. At the time, no substantial evidence of election fraud had been produced to support any of the claims. The report also breaks down the four key categories Meadows pressed Rosen about:

"Investigate various discredited claims of election fraud in Georgia that the Trump campaign was simultaneously advancing in a lawsuit that the Georgia Supreme Court had refused to hear on an expedited basis;

Investigate false claims of 'signature match anomalies' in Fulton County, Georgia, even though Republican state elections officials had made clear "there has been no evidence presented of any issues with the signature matching process."

Investigate a theory known as 'Italygate,' which was promoted by an ally of the President's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and which held that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and an Italian IT contractor used military satellites to manipulate voting machines and change Trump votes to Biden votes. Meadows also asked DOJ to meet with Giuliani on Italygate and other election fraud claims.

Investigate a series of claims of election fraud in New Mexico that had been widely refuted and in some cases rejected by the courts, including a claim that Dominion Voting Systems machines caused late-night 'vote dumps' for Democratic candidates."

The report also notes that Meadows' actions are in violation of policies that place limitations on communication between White House and DOJ officials in regards to certain law enforcement matters. This policy was put in place after the Watergate scandal.

3. "After personally meeting with Trump, Jeffrey Bossert Clark [former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division] pushed Rosen and Donoghue to assist Trump's election subversion scheme — and told Rosen he would decline Trump's potential offer to install him as Acting Attorney General if Rosen agreed to aid that scheme."

After having private conversations with Trump, Clark pressed Rosen and Donoghue to announce an investigation into election fraud and have legislatures in key swing states appoint alternate election officials. The report highlights a draft letter Clark sent to Rosen and Donoghue on December 28. The letter, which was addressed to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), the General Assembly Speaker, and Senate President Pro Tempore, included a number of recommended directives, many of which violated election laws.

In fact, Clark's proposed action, which would have had the DOJ override an already-certified popular vote, was described as "a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority," according to the report:

"The letter was titled "Georgia Proof of Concept" and Clark suggested replicating it in "each relevant state." The letter would have informed state officials that DOJ had "taken notice" of election irregularities in their state and recommended calling a special legislative session to evaluate these irregularities, determine who "won the most legal votes," and consider appointing a new slate of Electors. Clark's proposal to wield DOJ's power to override the already-certified popular vote reflected a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority: DOJ protects ballot access and ballot integrity, but has no role in determining which candidate won a particular election."

4. "Trump allies with links to the 'Stop the Steal' movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ."

The report included a brief list of the Trump allies who have been accused of pressuring DOJ officials to do the former president's bidding. Those individuals also had ties to the former president's "Stop the Steal" movement and the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol that followed Trump's rally on January 6.

They are:

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.): The report indicates that the Republican lawmaker spoke directly to Donoghue about baseless claims of election fraud in his state.

Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano (R): As an avid Trump ally, Mastriano reportedly "spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account to provide transportation for Trump supporters to attend the 'Save America Rally' on January 6." The report also indicates that he "was present on the Capitol grounds as the insurrection unfolded." Like Perry, Mastriano also spoke with Donoghue in reference to unfounded claims of election fraud in Pennsylvania.

Trump campaign legal advisor Cleta Mitchell: Described as one of the earliest advocates for Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, the Senate report also notes Mitchell was a "participant in the January 2, 2021 call where Trump 5 pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to 'find 11,780 votes.'"

5. "Trump forced the resignation of U.S. Attorney Byung Jin ('BJay') Pak, whom he believed was not doing enough to address false claims of election fraud in Georgia. Trump then went outside the line of succession when naming an Acting U.S. Attorney, bypassing First Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine and instead, appointing Bobby Christine because he believed Christine would 'do something' about his election fraud claims."

When former U.S. Attorney General Pak's investigative results did not align with the outcome Trump was hoping for, the outraged former president publicly berated him and described him as "a "Never Trumper." The former president also bulldozed over protocol and the proper line of succession to appoint someone he believed would produce favorable results to help him overturn the presidential election.

. "By pursuing false claims of election fraud before votes were certified, DOJ deviated from longstanding practice meant to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election."

On November 9, 2020 the former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr released a memo that "directed prosecutors not to wait until after certification to investigate allegations of voting irregularities that 'could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.'"

6. In doing this, the report emphasizes Barr "weakened" the DOJ's policy to "avoid taking overt steps in election fraud investigations until after votes were certified, in order to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election." His actions before and after the election disregarded the DOJ's longstanding practice.

https://www.rawstory.com/stunning-distortion-of-dojs-authority-here-are-6-key-findings-in-senate-judiciary-s-report-on-trump-election-interference/

[Rick Plant]

Legal expert breaks down new bombshell evidence of Trump crimes in Senate report

The Senate Judiciary Committee's interim report on Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his election loss offers clear and abundant evidence of criminal wrongdoing, according to one legal expert.

The interim report, titled "Subverting Justice," outlines how the former president and his allies pressured the Department of Justice to overturn the 2020 election, and law professor Ryan Goodman explained how the findings so far portray a violation of the Political Coercion Act, which prohibits the use of threats or intimidation to benefit a political candidate.

"This prescient analysis helps frame key criminal law issue at hand, the Political Coercion Act 18 USC 610," Goodman tweeted.

The report found that a lower-ranking Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, pressed acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue to send a letter he'd written to Georgia officials filled with debunked claims of election fraud, and the Jan. 2 meeting became heated.

"I reminded [Clark] that I was his boss, that he was apparently continuing to violate the White House contact policy, that that letter was never going out while we were in charge of the Department," Donoghue said. "And I sort of orally reprimanded him on a number of points, including reaching out to witnesses, and [said] 'Who told you to conduct investigations and interview witnesses,' and things like that. It was getting very heated. And then he turned to Acting AG Rosen, and he said, 'Well, the President has offered me the position of Acting Attorney General. I told him I would let him know my decision on Monday. I need to think about that a little bit more.'"

Rosen told Senate investigators that he felt Clark was trying to coerce him into sending the corrupt letter by threatening to take his job on Trump's order.

"Close to that," Rosen said. "That he was saying that having done some due diligence as he requested, that he wasn't satisfied that Rich Donoghue and I were on this, but that he still wasn't sure what his answer would be on it. And he raised another thing that he might point to, that he might be able to say no [to the President], is if – that letter, if I reversed my position on the letter, which I was unwilling to do."

The committee's investigation found that Trump made the same threat himself on Dec. 31 to Rosen and Donoghue by threatening to fire and replace them with Clark, and the report notes that White House chief of staff was present at the Oval Office meeting -- making him a key witness to one of the ex-president's most corrupt acts.

"Bombshell in Dec. 27 call with Trump and Rosen-Donoghue ('just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me') was Trump's threat to fire and replace them with Clark," Goodman tweeted. "Was unclear if Meadows was on that call. Now clear Meadows was in similar New Year's Eve meeting."

The Republican minority's report points out that Trump didn't carry through in his threat to fire Rosen, which the interim report notes came after senior Justice Department officials and White House counsel Pat Cipollone threatened to resign en masse, but Goodman argued the former president already took one step in that direction.

"Before backing down," Goodman wrote, "looks like Trump did first take an affirmative step — an overt action — in furtherance of the scheme (to use the language of criminal conspiracy): Trump offered Clark to install him as acting attorney general and Clark accepted."

https://www.rawstory.com/senate-judiciary-committee-reports/

[Rick Plant]

'Subverting Justice': Senate panel details the 9 times Trump pressured DOJ to overturn election results

On the very day that Attorney General William Barr left office in late December, then-President Donald Trump and top White House aides began a "relentless" pressure campaign aimed at interim Justice Department leaders, including acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a new Senate committee report.

The effort included "near-daily outreach" to the department, such as nine calls and meetings with Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation found. The White House push continued right up to the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, when a mob of Trump supporters sought to block Congress' certification of President Joe Biden's election.

According to the committee, then-acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark repeatedly sought to "induce Rosen into helping Trump’s election subversion scheme" by telling Rosen that he would decline Trump's offer that he take Rosen's place if Rosen agreed to join.

The report said Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, pressured Rosen on "multiple occasions" to launch election fraud investigations, "violating longstanding restrictions on White House intervention in DOJ law enforcement matters."

According to the report, Meadows attempted to push Rosen to meet with Trump’s outside lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was waging a parallel legal campaign in the courts, where he pressed debunked allegations of voter fraud in multiple states.


DOJ, White House officials threatened to resign

The report recounts a contentious Oval Office meeting Jan. 3, when Donoghue warned that a mass resignation of Justice Department officials and federal prosecutors would follow if Trump moved to replace Rosen with Clark to aid the president's election subversion scheme.

According to testimony by Donoghue and Rosen, the resignations would not be confined to the Justice Department. During the three-hour meeting, the officials said, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy counsel Patrick Philbin threatened to tender their own resignations, reportedly calling Clark's efforts to pursue unfounded voter fraud allegations as “murder-suicide pact.”

After the meeting, Rosen and Donoghue learned that they had prevailed in an email from another Justice Department official: "I only have limited visibility into this, but it sounds like Rosen and the cause of justice won," the email stated. "We will convene a call when Jeff (Rosen) is back in the building (hopefully shortly). Thanks."

"Today’s report shows the American people just how close we came to a constitutional crisis," Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said. "Thanks to a number of upstanding Americans in the Department of Justice, Donald Trump was unable to bend the department to his will.  But it was not due to a lack of effort. Donald Trump would have shredded the Constitution to stay in power."

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the panel's ranking Republican, issued a dissenting version of the testimony provided by Rosen, Donoghue and other officials:  "The transcripts of this investigation speak for themselves, and they paint a very different picture from the left’s claims that the former president weaponized the Justice Department to alter the election results."

"The available evidence shows that President Trump did what we’d expect a president to do on an issue of this importance: he listened to his senior advisors and followed their advice and recommendations," Grassley said.

The Republican minority report characterized Trump's contacts as an expression of "concern with ensuring that DOJ was doing its job of fully investigating allegations of election fraud so that the American people would have confidence in the results of the 2020 election and with particular concern about the people’s faith in the Georgia special election."

"It is well-known that President Trump did not trust some elements at the DOJ and FBI, which evidently contributed to his concerns that DOJ was not doing enough to investigate allegations of election fraud," the minority report concluded.

The Senate report builds on findings by a House committee, which disclosed emails and other communications in July detailing similar efforts by Trump. According to Donoghue's notes of a  telephone call with Rosen on Dec. 27, Trump urged the acting attorney general to make a public statement that "the election was corrupt."

"Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen," Trump said during the phone call, according to the handwritten notes.

Trump persisted, even though Barr had publicly said before his departure Dec. 23 that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would've changed the results.

Report calls out William Barr for directing investigations into election

The Senate report took Barr to task for allegedly directing officials to "aggressively" pursue claims of election fraud deviating from "decades-long practice" in which the department avoided any appearance of election interference.

Citing a Nov. 9 memorandum, the report concluded that Barr "directly contradicted DOJ’s longstanding policy against overtly investigating election fraud allegations before the election results are certified."

“Accordingly, Barr authorized pre-certification investigations ‘if there are clear and apparently credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State’ – and called on prosecutors to ‘timely and appropriately address allegations of voting irregularities so that all of the American people … can have full confidence in the results of our elections.’”

Barr's memo roiled an already unsteady department, prompting the resignation of Justice's Election Crimes Branch chief.

According to the report, Barr directed the FBI to interview witnesses "concerning allegations that election workers at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena secretly tabulated suitcases full of illegal ballots."

"These claims were pushed by Giuliani at a Georgia Senate hearing and had already been debunked by the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office by the time Barr’s requested interviews took place," the report stated.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/07/senate-details-donald-trumps-push-doj-overturn-2020-election/6032581001/