Sen. Durbin Says What Happened in Trump DOJ Post-Election Was ‘Frightening’ After Hearing Directly from Fmr Acting AG

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) wouldn’t go into detail about what he learned from Jeffrey Rosen’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, though he claimed that the former acting attorney offered a “frightening” account of former President Donald Trump’s attempts to undermine the 2020 election.

Rosen’s closed-door hearing before the committee took place on Saturday, and he reportedly fielded questions about how Trump attempted to pressure the Justice Department into supporting his false claims that the election was corrupted by mass fraud. When Durbin joined CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday to discuss, he complimented Rosen’s “very open” and voluntary testimony while hinting that it had troubling revelations.

“It really is important that we ask these questions because what was going on in the Department of Justice was frightening from a Constitutional point of view,” Durbin said. “To think that Bill Barr left, resigned after he had announced he didn’t see irregularities in the election, and then his replacement was under extraordinary pressure [by] the President of the United States — even to the point where they were talking about replacing him — that pressure was on.”

Durbin also said the committee is also interested in hearing from Jeffrey Clark, who Durbin called Trump’s “heir apparent” because the former acting head of the DOJ’s civil division reportedly helped sow doubt in the 2020 election’s integrity. He refused to go into specifics on Rosen, though Bash asked him whether Trump tried to pressure the former acting AG into overturning the election.

“It was not that direct, but he was asking him to do certain things related to states, election returns, which he refused to do,” Durbin said. “He was being asked by leadership in the White House to meet with certain people who had these wild, bizarre theories of why the election wasn’t valid, and he refused to do it.”

“When you were listening to that testimony yesterday, what was the most shocking to you?” Bash followed up.

“Just how directly personally involved the president was, the pressure he was putting on Jeffrey Rosen,” Durbin answered. “It was real. Very real. And it was very specific… The former president is not subtle when he wants something. It’s a good thing for America that we had a person like Rosen in that position, who withstood the pressure.”

Watch above, via CNN.