David Axelrod Alarmed by Revelations About Trump Pressure on DOJ: ‘Richard Nixon Was a Choir Boy Compared to This’

CNN commentator David Axelrod shredded Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election toward the end of his presidency. On Wednesday, ABC reported that in December, the Department of Justice was circulating a draft of a letter addressed to top officials in Georgia calling them to convene a special session of the legislature to address “irregularities” in the presidential election there, which Trump had lost. The letter was ultimately not sent.

Additionally, CNN reported that in January, Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen’s chief-of-staff, Patrick Hovakimian, prepared a resignation letter because he expected Rosen to be fired after he rebuffed Trump’s attempts to enlist the assistance of the DOJ to meddle in the election after the fact.

These revelations come on the heels of the disclosure that another department official, Richard Donoghue, had taken notes during an exchange between Trump and Rosen in December. According to those notes, Rosen said the DOJ “can’t [and] won’t snap its fingers [and] change the outcome of the election.”

According to Donoghue’s notes, Trump replied that he was aware of this, and said “just say the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.”

Axelrod drew a parallel to the Saturday Night Massacre, when Richard Nixon’s attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned rather than carry out his order to fire the special prosecutor who was investigating the Watergate break-in. But the former Senior Advisor to President Obama said what Nixon did hardly rose to the level of what Trump tried to accomplish in the weeks after the 2020 election:

Richard Nixon was a choir boy compared to this. This was an attempt to essentially steal an American election, an election for the presidency using the justice department as a front to do it. It’s the most appalling, disturbing thing you can imagine, and the only thing that disturbs me more is that the architect of that is currently the frontrunner for the nomination of his party to run again.

Imagine if Donald Trump got this power in his hands again. You know, he was frustrated that he couldn’t get Justice Department officials to hew to his wishes on this. I don’t think he’d make that mistake again, and that’s a very, very disturbing prospect for this country.

Watch above via CNN.