Former U.S. Attorney Testifies He Resigned After Learning Trump Wanted to Fire Him for Not Backing Election Fraud Claims: Report
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A former United States Attorney told the Senate Judiciary Committee he resigned his position after learning that then-President Donald Trump planned on firing him after he had found no evidence supporting Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Byung Pak was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia until he abruptly stepped down on January 4. According to The New York Times, he told the Senate panel on Wednesday he had learned from top officials in the Department of Justice that Trump intended to remove him over his refusal to claim that the presidential election in Georgia was rife with voter fraud.
Joe Biden won the state by less than a quarter of a percentage point, defeating Trump there by 11,779 votes. Just two days before Pak resigned, Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes in his favor to overturn the election results in the state.
“What I want to do is this,” Trump told Raffensperger on the call, which the secretary of state’s office recorded. “I just want to find 11,780 votes… because we won the state.”
Trump has obsessed over his election loss and has fixated on key areas that Biden won, including Fulton County, Georgia, which is home to the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta. The former president has touted all kinds of wild conspiracy theories about the election, including ones about alleged nefarious happenings in the county.
Pak did not say whether Trump played a factor in his decision to resign as U.S. Attorney, but the suddenness of his departure raised eyebrows at the time. His testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee is likely to add the suspicions surrounding the finals days of the Trump presidency. On January 3, Trump reportedly met with Justice Department officials to discuss firing Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, and replace him with DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, who signaled a willingness to make baseless claims about voter fraud in Georgia.
