A month-and-a-half after it was reported that Donald Trump had pressured the Department of Justice to challenge the results of the 2020 Presidential Election, a new report has gotten into some specifics.
According to a Friday (July 30) report from CNN, notes from a Dec. 27, 2020 phone call between Trump and the DOJ indicate that the former president told the department to say that there was foul play involved in the outcome of the election.
“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” reads notes from acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue.
In a statement, House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney made the implication of these notes clear. “These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” she wrote.
This report only adds to a lengthy list of reported activities that have led people to accuse Trump himself of being corrupt. It arrives on the same day that it was reported that the DOJ said that the IRS has to turn over his tax returns to Congress.
“The Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has invoked sufficient reasons for requesting the former President’s tax information,” reads one part of the opinion. The DOJ determined that the “Treasury must furnish the information to the Committee.”
In a statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi explained why Trump’s tax returns needed to be given to Congress.
“Access to former President Trump’s tax returns is a matter of national security,” reads one part of Pelosi’s statement. “The American people deserve to know the facts of his troubling conflicts of interest and undermining of our security and democracy as president.”