Under normal procedure, Pak’s top deputy, Kurt Erskine, would have become the acting U.S. ![]() attorney for the neighboring Southern District of Georgia, replaced Pak on an acting basis. 4, made no mention of his reason for leaving the post he’d held since October 2017, though the move raised questions at the time because it broke with the Justice Department’s succession protocol.īobby Christine, then the U.S. Though the findings aren’t final, the report adds details about Pak’s ouster and confirms it was related to his resistance to pursuing Trump’s demands to find nonexistent election fraud. Thursday’s report was only an interim account, released as committee investigators continue to gather evidence in their investigation into Trump’s efforts shortly after the November election to undermine President Joe Biden’s victory. Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, asked Pak to make an investigation of supposedly illegal ballots carried around in suitcases “a top priority,” Pak told committee investigators in an interview made public for the first time Thursday. ![]() Pak would not substantiate unfounded claims that the election results in Georgia were fraudulent, the report said. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Byung Jin “BJay” Pak, resigned under pressure from the Trump White House in early January. The report, written by Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, found that the U.S. "What I'm asking you to do is just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.( GA Recorder) - Former President Donald Trump forced a top federal prosecutor in Atlanta to step down because he wouldn’t help Trump overturn his loss of Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, a U.S. "That's not what I'm asking you to do," Trump replied. The committee displayed handwritten notes Donoghue took during the conversation with Trump.Īt one point, according to the notes, Rosen told Trump that "the DOJ can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election." President, is an example of what people are telling you that is not true," Donoghue recalled telling Trump. Donoghue said that a hand recount showed there was one error in more than 15,000 votes cast.ĭonoghue said he informed the president of the 0.0063% error rate. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)ĭonoghue said that as Trump went through an "arsenal of allegations," he told the president, "No, that is false," one by one, in "a serial fashion as he moved from one theory to another."Īmong the allegations Donoghue said Trump was "so fixated on" was a report that claimed there was a 68% error rate in one Michigan county's ballot-counting machines. "I wanted to try to cut through the noise, because it was clear to us that there were a lot of people whispering in his ear feeding him these conspiracy theories and I felt that being very blunt in that conversation might help make it clear to the president that these allegations were simply not true."įormer Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue testifies before the House select committee Thursday. "I felt in that conversation it was incumbent to make it clear to the president what our investigations had revealed," Donoghue recalled. The former officials told the panel that they had investigated every claim and found they had no merit, but that Trump continued to peddle them.ĭonoghue said he tried in vain to "educate" Trump. 27, 2020, phone call with then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, Trump raised a litany of false allegations about voter fraud. 6 committee Thursday, former Justice Department officials described a 90-minute phone call in late December 2020 with then-President Donald Trump during which Trump pleaded with them to declare that the election was "corrupt" despite being told his claims of fraud were false.ĭuring the Dec.
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