Eric Holder Calls Trump Efforts to Pressure DOJ to Overturn Election, a ‘Coup’ Attempt: ‘Not a Word I Would Have Used Before This Week’

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Former Attorney General Eric Holder told Mediaite founder Dan Abrams that he found the news of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure the Department of Justice to overturn the 2020 election “alarming,” calling it a “coup attempt.”

Holder made the comments in a Friday appearance on Abrams’ SiriusXM program, The Dan Abrams Show, in response to the news that Trump had pressured top DOJ officials to undermine the results of the 2020 election, telling them to “just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me.” That revelation came from handwritten notes, which were obtained by the House Oversight and Reform Committee and originally taken by former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue during a December 27 call with Trump and then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

Abrams introduced the segment by discussing this news “about the extent of pressure” that Trump had attempted to put on the DOJ regarding his claims of election fraud, and asking Holder for his reaction.

Holder called it “extremely alarming to see what was going on at the Justice Department, what the Justice Department was being subject to from the White House,” and that people should be “alarmed by these revelations” regardless of their partisan affiliations.

“I mean,” explained Holder, “what we’re seeing here was, in essence, a coup attempt and an attempt by people at the White House to try to get the Justice Department to be the foundation for that coup by having the Justice Department say with no basis, in fact, that there was election irregularities in some critical states and then use that as the way in which you would delay. And now, you know, you can fix something in a different way.”

This was not “just a protest that went bad,” Holder added, but “all part of a plan…they were trying to subvert our democracy.”

“Well, you used the word coup there,” said Abrams. “And that’s a that’s a big word coming from you. You think it applies.”

Holder commented that “coup” was “not a word I use lightly” and not something he would have necessarily said before this week’s news.

The former attorney general added that it was fortunate that the “more sane people” at DOJ “refused to take part” in these efforts to undermine the election, and in combination with the events of January 6th, went far beyond a “protest that went bad.”

“That was an attempt, a physical attempt to try to stop the certification of the election,” said Holder, “which is consistent with the documents that we are we’re seeing come out involving the Justice Department and and the White House.”

Listen above, via SiriusXM.