Deplorable

Donald Trump pressed senior Justice Department officials in late 2020 to “just say the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me” and Republican lawmakers, according to stunning handwritten notes that illustrate how far the president was willing to go to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.

The notes, taken by Justice Department official Richard Donoghue, were released to Congress this week and made public Friday

[...]

The documents show the extent to which senior Justice Department officials “were on a knife’s edge” in late 2020 as Trump sought to prevent Biden from becoming president, said David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official.

[...]

In one Dec. 27 conversation, according to the written account, acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen told Trump that the Justice Department “can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election.”

The president replied that he understood but wanted the agency to “just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” according to the notes written by Donoghue, a participant in the discussion.

[...]

“These notes reveal that a sitting president, defeated in a free and fair election, personally and repeatedly pressured Justice Department leaders to help him foment a coup in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power,” [David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official] said. “And that should shock the conscience of every American, regardless of political persuasion.”

  WaPo

That's assuming the Republicans and Trump cultists have a conscience, and that's an assumption I'm not willing to make.

The notes were made public by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on the same day the Justice Department announced that it would support the release of Trump’s personal and business tax returns to a different Democratic-controlled House committee — another legal setback for the former president, who could continue to fight the issue in court.

[...]

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, said the 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.”

[...]

The notes also say that Trump suggested to Rosen that he might be replaced at the helm of the Justice Department and even dropped the name of his possible successor.

“We have an obligation to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election,” Trump said, according to the notes. “People tell me Jeff Clark is great, I should put him in. People want me to replace DOJ leadership.”

The people being Trump and John Barron.

Donoghue’s notes show that Trump repeatedly brought up unsubstantiated tales of voter fraud in various states, which the Justice Department officials told him were not true.

“You guys may not be following the Internet the way I do,” Trump responded, according to the notes.

Which is why they weren't buying the bullshit.

Trump and his lawyers could have sought to block the release of Donoghue’s notes to Congress. There were days of discussion among Trump advisers about whether to do so, one adviser said, but the former president did not believe that the notes showed anything problematic, even though some of his advisers feared that the disclosures would be damaging.

“If it gets more attention on the election, he welcomes it,” this adviser said.

Fucking idiot.

[T]he Justice Department informed Rosen and others this week that their conversations with the president about the election were not protected by executive privilege.

In a statement revealing the content of the notes Friday, Maloney said that her committee “has begun scheduling interviews with key witnesses to investigate the full extent of the former President’s corruption, and I will exercise every tool at my disposal to ensure all witness testimony is secured without delay.”

And then impose no consequences?

Mr. Trump did not name the lawmakers, but at other points during the call, he mentioned Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, whom he described as a “fighter”; Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who at the time promoted the idea that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump; and Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, whom Mr. Trump praised for “getting to bottom of things.”

Mr. Jordan and Mr. Johnson denied any role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: