Following reports that Justice Department (DoJ) officials sought to overturn the election of President Joe Biden, the department’s inspector general announced on Monday that he is mounting an investigation.
In a statement, Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his office is “initiating an investigation into whether any former or current DoJ official engaged in an improper attempt to have DoJ seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election.”
The investigation comes after the New York Times reported on Friday that “a former assistant attorney general, Jeffrey Clark, had been discussing a plan with then-President Donald Trump to oust the acting attorney general, try to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential race and suggest falsely that there had been widespread election fraud,” says the Associated Press.
Clark’s action “led the entire top echelon of the department and many of their aides to threaten to resign en masse” and Trump abandoned the scheme, says Politico.
Clark has since left the DoJ, and the federal government, along with most former Trump officials.
The day after the Times report, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for the probe, writing in a tweet that it was “unconscionable a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people’s will,” CNN reports.
In his Monday statement, Horowitz signaled a broad potential scope for the inquiry, saying, “The investigation will encompass all relevant allegations” that come within the scope of his office’s jurisdiction.
“Nearly all the legal challenges [of the election results] from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, which includes three justices nominated by Trump,” says the AP.
