Rosen told senators Trump was ‘persistent’ in pressuring DOJ to discredit election: report

Former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen reportedly said in his closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Saturday that former President Trump was “persistent” in attempting to put pressure on the Justice Department to discredit 2020 election results. 

The Washington Post, citing a person familiar with the testimony, reported Thursday Rosen said in his opening statement that he believed Trump’s unsupported claims of a stolen 2020 election were “misguided, and I disagreed with things that President Trump suggested the Justice Department do with regard to the election.” 

“So we did not do them,” Rosen added, according to the source, who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity to share details from the closed-door session with committee staff. 

“The president was persistent with his inquiries, and I would have strongly preferred that he had chosen a different focus in the last month of his presidency,” Rosen said, according to the Post. 

The former Department of Justice (DOJ) head also reportedly explained that when Trump was told he was “misinformed or wrong, or that we would not take various actions to discredit the election’s validity, he acquiesced to the department’s position.”

The New York Times reported Saturday that Rosen sat for hours of congressional testimony as part of the Senate committee’s ongoing inquiry into Trump’s efforts to overturn President Biden’s election win by pressuring the DOJ to support his election fraud theories. 

Members of the Judiciary Committee who attended Rosen’s interview Saturday told reporters that the former DOJ official’s testimony provided important details on Trump’s pursuit to overturn election results. 

“I was struck by how close the country came to total catastrophe,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said, noting that there were some “highly significant leads” from the interview that the committee should investigate. 

In response to the Post’s report on Rosen’s testimony, Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington said in a statement shared with The Hill, “We don’t need selective, partisan leaks from closed door testimony to know that President Donald J. Trump rightfully voiced his belief that America deserved a complete investigation into the 2020 election.” 

“He has been doing exactly that publicly since Election Day,” she continued. “Sadly, the media has become obsessed with going after any American who is brave enough to ask questions and seek the truth, instead of actually looking into the serious and substantiated evidence of fraud.”

The Hill has also reached out to the Senate Judiciary Committee for additional information. 

The House select committee on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is also looking into Trump’s actions following the 2020 election, and the DOJ inspector general is carrying out a separate inquiry into whether any current or former agency officials were involved in working to invalidate election results.