New emails show the Trump White House's brazen efforts to use the DOJ to overturn the election results

• Lawmakers released emails showing the Trump White House tried to use the DOJ to steal the election.
• Multiple emails showed Trump's efforts to stop the certification of battleground states' electoral votes and file a Supreme Court lawsuit.
• One DOJ official described a request from Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows as "pure insanity," with another adding, "Can you believe this?"

House lawmakers on Tuesday released emails showing how far the Trump White House went to overturn the 2020 election results. The emails show the most brazen effort yet by the former president and those around him to weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to steal back the White House.

The House Oversight Committee obtained the documents, and lawmakers on the panel have requested additional records from the DOJ about the matter.

• In one of the emails, President Donald Trump's assistant sent a message with the subject line "From POTUS" urging Jeffrey Rosen, the deputy attorney general, to root out purported voter fraud in Antrim County, Michigan. The email was dated December 14, the day the Electoral College met to certify the election results.
  • According to the documents, the email included "talking points" that said a "Cover-up is Happening regarding the voting machines in Michigan," and that "Michigan cannot certify for Biden."
• Roughly 40 minutes later, Trump tweeted that Attorney General William Barr would be resigning from his post, and that he would be replaced on an acting basis by Rosen.
• In another email, dated December 29, Molly Michael, Trump's White House assistant, emailed Rosen; Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general; and Jeffrey Wall, the acting solicitor general, a draft of a legal brief to file with the Supreme Court challenging the election results in Pennsylvania, which Biden won.
  • "The President asked me to send the attached draft document for your review," Michael's email said, adding that the brief had also been shared with Mark Meadows and Pat Cipollone - respectively, the White House chief of staff and the White House counsel. Michael also attached a number by which she said the DOJ officials could reach Trump to discuss the matter.
  • The brief included many of the same claims outlined in a lawsuit that the Texas attorney general filed in the high court challenging the election results in Pennsylvania and other battleground states. The Supreme Court refused to hear Texas' case because of a lack of standing.
• The documents also included a December 30 email from Meadows asking Rosen to probe purported voter and election fraud in Georgia. "Can you have your team look into these allegations of wrongdoing. Only the alleged fraudulent activity," the email said. Meadows was referring to alleged "video issues" and "equipment" problems in Fulton County.
• Emails indicated that senior DOJ officials - including Rosen and Steven Engel, a lawyer in the department's Office of Legal Counsel - traveled to the White House at the end of December and the beginning of January. It's unclear whom they met with, but the interactions took place at the height of Trump's efforts to overturn the election results.
• In a January 1 email, top DOJ officials expressed frustration with Meadows' fixation on a nonsense conspiracy theory that Italian officials tampered with ballots in Fulton County, Georgia.
  • "Pure insanity," Donoghue said in an email to Rosen that included Meadows' request to investigate the Italy conspiracy theory.
  • "Can you believe this?" Rosen in response. "I am not going to respond to the message below."
  • "At least it's better than the last one, but that doesn't say much," Donoghue replied.
• The document dump also included a January 4 email from Byung J. Pak, the US attorney from the Northern District of Georgia. Pak's resignation came one day after The Washington Post reported on a phone call in which Trump repeatedly pressured Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to "find" enough votes to flip the state's presidential election results in his favor.
  • The Post also reported on January 21 that the DOJ inspector general was investigating the circumstances of Pak's sudden departure, which came as a shock to employees in his office.
  • Two people familiar with the matter told the newspaper that Pak decided to resign after he got a phone call from a senior DOJ official in Washington, DC. The person his resignation email was addressed to works at the department's Executive Office for United States Attorneys, and their name was redacted in the email published on Tuesday. Donoghue and another person from EOUSA whose name was also redacted were copied on the email.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the New York congresswoman who chairs the Oversight Committee, said in a statement that the documents show that Trump "tried to corrupt our nation's chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost."

"Those who aided or witnessed President Trump's unlawful actions must answer the Committee's questions about this attempted subversion of democracy," Maloney's statement said. "My Committee is committed to ensuring that the events leading to the violent January 6 insurrection are fully investigated."