By Ken Zino
Ex-president Trump didn’t just put his hand on the scales of justice to steal the election from President Biden, he used the full force of his position –- giving new meaning to bully pulpit –- to uphold his own personal interest. Thursday’s Select Committee hearings concentrated on exposing that during the final weeks of his presidency, Trump became increasingly desperate to cling to power. Trump Justice isn’t blind -- Trump Justice means allowing the ex-president to unleash his blind fury to pursue his own interests against anyone involved in trying to uphold a free and fair election.
Vice Chair Liz Cheney said in her opening: “The President oversaw and personally participated in an effort in multiple states to vilify, threaten and pressure election officials, and to use false allegations to pressure state legislators to change the outcome of the election ... President Trump worked with and directed the Republican National Committee and others to organize an effort to create fake electoral slates, and later to transmit those materially false documents to federal officials, again as part of his planning for January 6th.”
In testimony Thursday, Jeffrey Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the January 6 coup attempt, was in a democracy-threatening meeting in the Oval Office with Trump on January 3. That was three days before the Capitol insurrection failed to stop the transfer of power to the duly elected President Biden – albeit not peacefully. The Lord of Mar-a-Largo in this confrontation was about to replace Rosen with an unqualified, but highly ambitious and ethically bankrupt bureaucrat, Jeffrey Clark, who was ready to support Trump’s fraudulent election claims that numerous DOJ officials starting with former Attorney General Barr said were without merit. Clark has never been in front of a grand jury, although that might be about to change. Clark had never tried a case. Although now he might have a front row seat at the defendant’s table. Barr had resigned on December 23 -- I’m surprised he lasted that long after November 3.
In those last desperate days Trump wanted the Justice Department to help legitimize his lies by saying the election was corrupt and to appoint a special counsel to investigate ‘election fraud’ and to send a letter to six state legislatures urging them to consider altering the results. All without any evidence.
Lowlights today include a direct quote from Trump recorded by Rosen in his own hand at the meeting; “Just say it [the election] was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
DOJ would not do this -- having told Trump there was no evidence of fraud… that there was no evidence of widespread irregularities that would change the outcome of the election. This was a shamelessly political act by Trump directed to the DOJ, which has no standing whatsoever to get involved with states’ election administration.
What saved us was a sequel to Watergate’s Saturday Night Massacre, but in this case the threat of mass DOJ resignations stopped Trump from appointing a man whose sole qualification was that he would do whatever Trump wanted.
It is without question and beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt that it is time for DOJ to do its job by enforcing 18 United States Code 301 – conspiracy to defraud the United States. Trump, Jeffrey Clark, Rudy Giuliani, DOJ lawyer Ken Klukowski, among others still to be named, used deceit, craft and trickery to attempt to stop an official proceeding of the U.S. Government, which is DOJ’s actual client. More will be implicated in what looks like treason. More subpoenas and depositions are coming. Then, let them all, possibly dozens upon dozens, explain such flagrant acts of law-breaking in front of a jury.