In this Jul 11, 2021, file photo former president Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas. WASHINGTON: Former President Donald Trump suffered twin setbacks on Friday when the Justice Department cleared the way to release his tax records and disclosed a memo showing he urged top officials last year to falsely claim his election defeat was"corrupt".
"Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R Congressmen," Trump, referring to Republican lawmakers, told Jeffrey Rosen in a Dec 27 phone call days before Rosen was appointed as acting attorney general. The department's Office of Legal Counsel declared the department had erred in 2019 when it found that the request for Trump's taxes by the House Ways and Means Committee was based on a"disingenuous" objective aimed at exposing them to the public.
That same night, the candidate he endorsed to succeed a Texas congressman who died of COVID-19 in February lost her run-off election against a Republican state legislator even after Trump's political organisation made a last-minute ad buy to support her. The Justice Department this week decided that due to"compelling legislative interests," it was authorizing six former Trump administration officials to sit for interviews with the House Oversight and Reform Committee. These include Rosen and Donoghue, as well as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Patrick Hovakimian and former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark.