WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s prime leaders listened in shocked silence this month: One of their friends, they had been informed, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as performing legal professional normal and wield the division’s energy to power Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election outcomes.
The unassuming lawyer who labored on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising methods to forged doubt on the election outcomes and to bolster Mr. Trump’s persevering with authorized battles and the stress on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to perform these plans, Mr. Trump was about to determine whether or not to fireplace Mr. Rosen and substitute him with Mr. Clark.
The division officers, convened on a convention name, then requested one another: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?
The reply was unanimous. They would resign.
Their casual pact finally helped persuade Mr. Trump to maintain Mr. Rosen in place, calculating {that a} furor over mass resignations on the prime of the Justice Department would eclipse any consideration on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s determination got here solely after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing circumstances to him in a weird White House assembly that two officers in contrast with an episode of Mr. Trump’s actuality present “The Apprentice,” albeit one that might immediate a constitutional disaster.
The beforehand unknown chapter was the end result of the president’s long-running effort to batter the Justice Department into advancing his private agenda. He additionally pressed Mr. Rosen to appoint particular counsels, together with one who would look into Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election gear that Mr. Trump’s allies had falsely stated was working with Venezuela to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
This account of the division’s ultimate days below Mr. Trump’s management relies on interviews with 4 former Trump administration officers who requested not to be named due to concern of retaliation.
Mr. Clark stated that this account contained inaccuracies however didn’t specify, including that he couldn’t focus on any conversations with Mr. Trump or Justice Department legal professionals due to “the strictures of legal privilege.” “Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommonly, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties,” he stated. “All my official communications were consistent with law.”
Mr. Clark categorically denied that he devised any plan to oust Mr. Rosen, or to formulate suggestions for motion based mostly on factual inaccuracies gleaned from the web. “My practice is to rely on sworn testimony to assess disputed factual claims,” Mr. Clark stated. “There was a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president. It is unfortunate that those who were part of a privileged legal conversation would comment in public about such internal deliberations, while also distorting any discussions.”
Mr. Clark additionally famous that he was the lead signatory on a Justice Department request final month asking a federal decide to reject a lawsuit that sought to stress Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the outcomes of the election.
Mr. Trump declined to remark. An adviser stated that Mr. Trump has constantly argued that the justice system ought to examine “rampant election fraud that has plagued our system for years.”
The adviser added that “any assertion to the contrary is false and being driven by those who wish to keep the system broken.” Mr. Clark agreed and stated that “legal privileges” prevented him from divulging specifics relating to the dialog.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to remark, as did Mr. Rosen.
When Mr. Trump stated on Dec. 14 that Attorney General William P. Barr was leaving the division, some officers thought that he would possibly enable Mr. Rosen a brief reprieve earlier than urgent him about voter fraud. After all, Mr. Barr could be round for an additional week.
Instead, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Rosen to the Oval Office the subsequent day. He needed the Justice Department to file authorized briefs supporting his allies’ lawsuits searching for to overturn his election loss. And he urged Mr. Rosen to appoint particular counsels to examine not solely unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud, but additionally Dominion, the voting machines agency.
(Dominion has sued the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who inserted these accusations into 4 federal lawsuits about voter irregularities that had been all dismissed.)
Mr. Rosen refused. He maintained that he would make selections based mostly on the info and the legislation, and he reiterated what Mr. Barr had privately informed Mr. Trump: The division had investigated voting irregularities and discovered no proof of widespread fraud.
But Mr. Trump continued to press Mr. Rosen after the assembly — in telephone calls and in particular person. He repeatedly stated that he didn’t perceive why the Justice Department had not discovered proof that supported conspiracy theories in regards to the election that a few of his private legal professionals had espoused. He declared that the division was not combating onerous sufficient for him.
As Mr. Rosen and the deputy legal professional normal, Richard P. Donoghue, pushed again, they had been unaware that Mr. Clark had been launched to Mr. Trump by a Pennsylvania politician and had informed the president that he agreed that fraud had affected the election outcomes.
Mr. Trump shortly embraced Mr. Clark, who had been appointed the performing head of the civil division in September and was additionally the pinnacle of the division’s environmental and pure sources division.
As December wore on, Mr. Clark talked about to Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue that he spent loads of time studying on the web — a remark that alarmed them as a result of they inferred that he believed the unfounded conspiracy concept that Mr. Trump had gained the election. Mr. Clark additionally informed them that he needed the division to maintain a information convention saying that it was investigating severe accusations of election fraud. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue rejected the proposal.
As Mr. Trump centered more and more on Georgia, a state he misplaced narrowly to Mr. Biden, he complained to Justice Department leaders that the U.S. legal professional in Atlanta, Byung J. Pak, was not attempting to discover proof for false election claims pushed by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and others. Mr. Donoghue warned Mr. Pak that the president was now fixated on his workplace, and that it won’t be tenable for him to proceed to lead it, in accordance to two folks acquainted with the dialog.
That dialog and Mr. Trump’s efforts to stress Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him votes compelled Mr. Pak to abruptly resign this month.
Mr. Clark was additionally centered on Georgia. He drafted a letter that he needed Mr. Rosen to ship to Georgia state legislators that wrongly stated that the Justice Department was investigating accusations of voter fraud of their state, and that they need to transfer to void Mr. Biden’s win there.
Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue once more rejected Mr. Clark’s proposal.
On New Year’s Eve, the trio met to focus on Mr. Clark’s refusal to hew to the division’s conclusion that the election outcomes had been legitimate. Mr. Donoghue flatly informed Mr. Clark that what he was doing was fallacious. The subsequent day, Mr. Clark informed Mr. Rosen — who had mentored him whereas they labored collectively on the legislation agency Kirkland & Ellis — that he was going to focus on his technique with the president early the subsequent week, simply earlier than Congress was set to certify Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.
Unbeknown to the performing legal professional normal, Mr. Clark’s timeline moved up. He met with Mr. Trump over the weekend, then knowledgeable Mr. Rosen noon on Sunday that the president meant to substitute him with Mr. Clark, who may then attempt to cease Congress from certifying the Electoral College outcomes. He stated that Mr. Rosen may keep on as his deputy legal professional normal, leaving Mr. Rosen speechless.
Unwilling to step down with out a combat, Mr. Rosen stated that he wanted to hear straight from Mr. Trump and labored with the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, to convene a gathering for early that night.
Even as Mr. Clark’s pronouncement was sinking in, gorgeous information broke out of Georgia: State officers had recorded an hourlong name, published by The Washington Post, throughout which Mr. Trump pressured them to manufacture sufficient votes to declare him the victor. As the fallout from the recording ricocheted by means of Washington, the president’s determined bid to change the result in Georgia got here into sharp focus.
Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue pressed forward, informing Steven Engel, the pinnacle of the Justice Department’s workplace of authorized counsel, about Mr. Clark’s newest maneuver. Mr. Donoghue convened a late-afternoon name with the division’s remaining senior leaders, laying out Mr. Clark’s efforts to substitute Mr. Rosen.
Mr. Rosen deliberate to quickly head to the White House to focus on his destiny, Mr. Donoghue informed the group. Should Mr. Rosen be fired, all of them agreed to resign en masse. For some, the plan introduced to thoughts the so-called Saturday Night Massacre of the Nixon period, the place Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and his deputy resigned somewhat than perform the president’s order to fireplace the particular prosecutor investigating him.
The Clark plan, the officers concluded, would severely hurt the division, the federal government and the rule of legislation. For hours, they anxiously messaged and referred to as each other as they awaited Mr. Rosen’s destiny.
Around 6 p.m., Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Clark met on the White House with Mr. Trump, Mr. Cipollone, his deputy Patrick Philbin and different legal professionals. Mr. Trump had Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark current their arguments to him.
Mr. Cipollone suggested the president not to fireplace Mr. Rosen and he reiterated, as he had for days, that he didn’t suggest sending the letter to Georgia lawmakers. Mr. Engel suggested Mr. Trump that he and the division’s remaining prime officers would resign if he fired Mr. Rosen, leaving Mr. Clark alone on the division.
Mr. Trump appeared considerably swayed by the concept firing Mr. Rosen would set off not solely chaos on the Justice Department, but additionally congressional investigations and probably recriminations from different Republicans and distract consideration from his efforts to overturn the election outcomes.
After almost three hours, Mr. Trump finally determined that Mr. Clark’s plan would fail, and he allowed Mr. Rosen to keep.
Mr. Rosen and his deputies concluded they’d weathered the turmoil. Once Congress licensed Mr. Biden’s victory, there could be little for them to do till they left together with Mr. Trump in two weeks.
They started to exhale days later because the Electoral College certification on the Capitol bought underway. And then they obtained phrase: The constructing had been breached.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.
