WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department's inspector general announced Monday an investigation into whether any current or former department officials tried to improperly "alter the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election" -- a broad review that follows the revelation that then-President Donald Trump considered replacing his acting attorney general with an appointee more amenable to his claims of voter fraud.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced the review in a two-paragraph news release, noting that his jurisdiction would be limited to "allegations concerning the conduct of former and current DOJ employees." He said he could not examine activity by other government officials. The news release said the inspector general's office will follow its normal process in releasing the results of its work publicly.
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Horowitz's announcement came just days after media reporting that Trump entertained a plan to replace the acting attorney general for his final weeks in office, Jeffrey Rosen, with a department lawyer, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who was more amenable to wielding the department's power to help keep Trump in office.
Trump aborted the plan only after Justice Department officials threatened mass resignations, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's political sensitivity.
The plan sparked anger among lawmakers and former Justice Department officials, who saw it as another attempt by Trump to leverage the powers of federal law enforcement to benefit his political interests.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., had publicly called for the inspector general to investigate "this attempted sedition." He said it was "unconscionable a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people's will."
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Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee said over the weekend that it has initiated its own oversight inquiry into officials including Clark.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, sent a letter to the Justice Department saying he would investigate efforts by Trump and Clark to use the agency "to further Trump's efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election."
Durbin asked the current acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, to preserve documents, emails and messages related to meetings involving top Justice Department officials, the White House and Trump.
The Senate could subpoena records and seek to compel testimony, though the politics of legislative inquiries often make them less revelatory than other investigations.
UNDER PRESSURE
Horowitz said he announced the Justice Department inquiry "to reassure the public that an appropriate agency is investigating the allegations," but he declined to comment further.
While Horowitz is likely to have broad access to Justice Department files and emails, he cannot compel the cooperation of former officials, which could limit his probe. The investigation is likely to reveal conversations officials had with Trump, but Horowitz's office does not have the jurisdiction to specifically explore actions taken by the president or other White House officials.
Trump and his political allies had long sought to press the Justice Department to help boost his claims of election fraud. The department inquired into allegations across the country but ultimately found the evidence lacking, and then-Attorney General William Barr said as much publicly in early December.
Along with Barr, election officials across the country confirmed there was no widespread fraud in the election. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, key battleground states won by Democratic President Joe Biden, also vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies were dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In addition to resisting the installation of Clark as attorney general, top Justice Department officials refused Trump's demands that they get involved in contesting the election's outcome at the Supreme Court, efforts first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Trump had pinned his hopes on a lawsuit filed by Texas that sought to throw out the election results in four battleground states that had gone for Biden -- Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia -- and wanted the Justice Department to support it, as Republican state attorneys general had. But department officials agreed with most legal observers that the case was a lost cause and that the Supreme Court would not agree that Texas had the legal standing to bring such a claim.
Barr consulted with then-acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall and told the White House why the approach was not viable, accurately predicting what the Supreme Court decided Dec. 11, according to a former administration official. None of Trump's three choices for the Supreme Court separated themselves from that finding.
After that, Trump pressed for the department to file its own petition at the Supreme Court, and the White House supplied a draft written by a private lawyer of what it might say. The former administration official said it was similar to the case the court had rejected, but it substituted the United States as the challenger. The department officials told the White House that there was even less chance the Supreme Court would agree to that, and the department refused to file it.
"It was dead on arrival," the official said.
Barr's relationship with Trump had already grown fraught because Barr would not take other steps that Trump saw as helpful to him politically in the months leading up to the election, sources said, and his publicly breaking with the president on fraud was something of a last straw. Trump became angry, and Barr contemplated whether he might have to resign or be fired, according to people familiar with the matter. While tensions later eased, Barr later submitted his resignation, indicating he planned to step down Dec. 23.
That left in charge Rosen, who had been Barr's top deputy and who shared his views on the lack of evidence to support Trump's claims of fraud, according to people familiar with the matter. But, the people said, Trump soon came to meet a different Justice Department official who seemed to share his worldview: Clark, whom Trump had appointed to lead the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division and who would come to lead the Civil Division.
Clark, according to people familiar with the matter, pushed in the final month of the administration to have the department hold a news conference to announce that investigators were examining serious fraud allegations, and to take particular steps in Georgia, such as sending a letter asserting there was an investigation ongoing and that Biden's win could be voided there.
Trump, the people said, then contemplated putting Clark in charge of the department, and Rosen was soon informed of the plan. The acting attorney general pushed for a meeting with Trump.
At the meeting were Trump, Clark and Rosen, along with Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general; Steven Engel, the head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel; and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, the people familiar with the matter said. The people said Rosen, Donoghue, Engel and Cipollone pushed against the idea of replacing Rosen and warned of mass resignations. Ultimately, Trump did not move forward, and Rosen remained in place.
All of those involved have since left the Justice Department, as they were Trump appointees.
Clark, in a statement, denied that he "devised a plan ... to oust Jeff Rosen," and he has also denied that he made recommendations "based on factual inaccuracies gleaned from the Internet."
Rosen has declined to comment.
OTHER INQUIRY
Horowitz had already been examining whether there was Justice Department malfeasance in another incident related to the election: the abrupt departure of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta after Trump complained that officials in Georgia were not doing enough to find election fraud.
Byung "BJay" Pak unexpectedly announced Jan. 4 that he was stepping down that day as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and Trump then bypassed Pak's top deputy in selecting a temporary replacement. According to people familiar with the matter, Pak had received a call from a senior Justice Department official in Washington that led him to believe he should resign shortly before he did so.
Pak's resignation came just a day after The Washington Post reported on a call in which Trump urged Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to "find" enough votes to overturn Trump's election defeat in that state.
The watchdog's investigation is part of a growing number of efforts underway to investigate the attempts by Trump and his allies to subvert the election results. The attempts culminated in a deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and a second impeachment of Trump, this time on a charge of inciting an insurrection.
Information for this article was contributed by Matt Zapotosky and Robert Barnes of The Washington Post; by Michael Balsamo of The Associated Press; and by Katie Benner of The New York Times.