OnPolitics: Trump White House pushed DOJ on voter fraud claims
Mabinty Quarshie
There's lots of news this week from the Republican Party.
- 🐘 Former President Donald Trump has been out of office since January, but we're just now learning new details about how the Justice Department was run during his four years in power.
- 😷 Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is back in the news after apologizing for affronting people with recent comments comparing the required wearing of safety masks in the House to the horrors of the Holocaust.
- ⚖️ And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested he would block a Supreme Court nominee in 2024 if Republicans regain control of the Senate after the 2022 midterm elections.
Democrats on the other hand are still working out a way forward on an infrastructure bill.
It's Mabinty, bringing you the news of the day.
Want this news roundup in your inbox every night? Sign up for OnPolitics newsletter here.
Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide
Follow the money emails
The Trump White House began to privately pressure then-Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen to look at allegations of voter fraud just before he was about to step in as acting head of the Justice Department in December – and even after then-Attorney General William Barr had publicly acknowledged the agency had found no evidence of widespread fraud that would've changed the results of the election.
How do we know this? A trove of emails released Tuesday by the House Oversight and Reform Committee show a persistent pressure campaign in the days leading up to Jan. 6, when former Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to keep Congress from counting state-certified Electoral College votes. The emails also show how top Justice Department officials, unconvinced about the merits of the voter fraud allegations, resisted calls from the White House to investigate the claims.
The emails were released ahead of a second House Oversight Committee hearing on the deadly assault on the Capitol.
Democrats respond: "These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation's chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost," Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the committee chairwoman and a Democrat from New York, said in a statement.
Real quick: Stories you need to read
- Donald Trump plans to hold first post-presidential rallies in Ohio, Florida in coming weeks
- Former GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher says he attended Jan. 6 protests before US Capitol riot
- From Reagan and Gorbachev to Biden and Putin: 6 meetings show how the US-Russia relationship has evolved
- Juneteenth celebrations arrive amid culture war on race theory, voting, police reform
Speaking of the Capitol riot ...
The FBI’s unheeded warnings that violence threatened the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 echoed intelligence failures of previous violent attacks in the United States, including mass shootings and the terrorist hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001, according to experts.
“You always find incompetence,” said former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who was vice chairman of the commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks. “It arrives all the time. Some days the same person can be competent and then incompetent a few hours later. That’s a great concern.”
One of the challenges facing intelligence analysts and law enforcement agencies is separating legitimate threats from useless chatter. As analysts combed through social media and websites before the Jan. 6 riot, threats often emerged from unknown sources that couldn't be verified and whose seriousness was tough to gauge.
How to prevent another attack? A key recommendation from the 9/11 Commission was to improve salaries and status within the FBI for analysts, who are trying to connect the dots of intelligence gathered, but who were treated at a lower class than agents.
Hamilton also said strong oversight of intelligence agencies is necessary to keep an eye on how information and warnings are distributed. He said repeating warnings several times and to several agencies is important because one agency might not respond as aggressively as another.
Don't forget to wear SPF when you're in the summer sun ☀️ — Mabinty