Donald Trump asked Attorney General Bill Barr and top DOJ officials to file a lawsuit at the US Supreme Court to over turn the election in his last weeks in office, but the officials refused, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
The WSJ reports (paywall): “Senior department officials, including Mr. Rosen, former Attorney General William Barr and former acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall refused to file the Supreme Court case, concluding that there was no basis to challenge the election outcome and that the federal government had no legal interest in whether Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden won the presidency, some of these people said. White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy, Patrick Philbin, also opposed Mr. Trump’s idea, which was promoted by his outside attorneys, these people said.”
The Daily Beast adds: “Top DOJ officials appear to have put their jobs on the line to protect the integrity of the department amid the chaos of the transition. Senior employees managed to prevent Trump from firing acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen at the time and replacing him with a stronger ally—an idea Trump was entertaining—by promising a mass resignation if the former president went through with it.”
