Trump defends his comments about election after release of DOJ notes

Former President Trump defended his comments to top Department of Justice (DOJ) officials about the 2020 election after notes from a call in December were released on Friday.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee released notes former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen’s deputy, Richard Donoghue, took during a Dec. 27 call between Donoghue, Rosen and Trump.

The notes showed Trump was pushing the officials to investigate election fraud claims with no evidence and allegedly told the officials to say the election was “corrupt.”

“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and other congressional allies, Donoghue wrote that the former president said in the call.

Trump released a statement on Saturday slamming the Oversight and Reform Committee for releasing the documents and said it was wrong to describe him as attempting to “overturn the election.”

“The corrupt and highly partisan House Democrats who run the House Oversight Committee yesterday released documents—including court filings dealing with the rigged election of 2020—that they dishonestly described as attempting to overturn the election,” Trump said while repeating claims the election was “rigged” despite having no evidence for the assertion.

“In fact, it is just the opposite. The documents were meant to uphold the integrity and honesty of elections and the sanctity of our vote,” he added. “The American People want, and demand, that the President of the United States, its chief law enforcement officer in the country, stand with them to fight for Election Integrity and to investigate attempts to undermine our nation.”

The officials told Trump the DOJ could not investigate election fraud claims if there was no evidence of widespread election fraud, according to the notes in the documents.

Donoghue allegedly told Trump there were “dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews” conducted by the DOJ, and no evidence of widespread voter fraud was found. 

Trump has been asserting for months that the election was rigged and even called on Congress to investigate his claims in his statement Saturday, more than eight months after the election.