Trump: “Leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

This piece was originally published in the June 27, 2022 edition of CAP Action’s newsletter, the Progress Report. Subscribe to the Progress Report here.

“‘Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to us.’ The President wanted the top Justice Department officials to declare that the election was corrupt even though as he knew there was absolutely no evidence to support that statement. The president didn’t care about actually investigating the facts.” – Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)

The January 6 committee continued its hearings last Thursday. Thursday’s hearing focused on the pressure former President Donald Trump put  on the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to help him try to execute his efforts to overturn the election.

When former Attorney General Bill Barr resigned in December 2020, he was replaced by one of last week’s witnesses, former acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen. Over the next month, Trump engaged Rosen and his deputy Richard Donaghue in near daily phone calls and meetings to plead with them for their complicity in his criminal attempt to overturn the election. His efforts to engage the DOJ in his conspiracy culminated in a dramatic two and a half hour Oval Office meeting during which Trump directly threatened to fire Rosen. Rosen rebuffed Trump.

According to Rosen and Donaghue’s testimony, Trump told them to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” At the end of the hearing, the committee publicly exposed that many of those Republicans in Congress—Reps. Louie Gohmert (TX), Matt Gaetz (FL), Scott Perry (PA), Mo Brooks (AL), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), and Andy Biggs (AZ)–asked the White House for a presidential pardon.

That damning fact exposes the truth of Trump’s plan to illegally pressure the DOJ into sabotaging the election. It wasn’t about the law—it was about a plan he hatched with his MAGA allies in Congress to overturn the will of the people and threaten our democracy.

Share the graphic below to get the truth out there:

In the news

• Over the weekend, President Joe Biden signed into law the first major gun safety legislation in decades. While noting that the bipartisan compromise bill did not deliver everything the president hoped for in a gun safety package, he emphasized that the measures contained in it—from expanded background checks to closing the “boyfriend loophole”—will save lives.
• People in cities across the country—from the steps of the Supreme Court to Macon, Georgia—gathered to protest the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe v. Wade and immediately outlawed abortion in almost a dozen states. Polls show that a majority of Americans disapprove of the decision and believe other basic rights such as marriage equality and access to contraception may also be denied in the wake of this decision.

What we’re reading

• “A historically unpopular Supreme Court made a historically unpopular decision” by Harry Enten (CNN)
• “Black women could see a 33% increase in pregnancy-related deaths post-Roe. Why?” by Tayo Bero (The Guardian)
• “We see it firsthand: red flag laws save lives” by Amy Barnhorst and Garen Wintemute (The Hill)
• “A week of highs: See where climate change made heat worse in America” by John Muyskens, Kasha Patel, and Naema Ahmed (The Washington Post)
• “Abortion returns to the states, but states can’t make gun decisions? This is the Trump Court.” by Richard Wolf (USA Today)
• “Jewish groups gear up to battle abortion bans after Roe overturned” by Ron Kampeas (The Times of Israel)

This piece was originally published in the June 27, 2022 edition of CAP Action’s newsletter, the Progress Report. Subscribe to the Progress Report here.