NYT: Ex-US Attorney Tells Senators Trump Fired Him When He Wouldn’t Support Big Lie

UNITED STATES - AUGUST 9: Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., talks with reporters in the U.S. Capitol on Monday, August 9, 2021. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
UNITED STATES - AUGUST 9: Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., talks with reporters in the U.S. Capitol on Monday, August 9, 2021. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Byung J. Pak told Senators on Wednesday that he resigned from his position in January because Trump was going to fire him for refusing to declare that the election was corrupt, the New York Times reported.

Pak spoke to the Senate Judiciary Committee for more than three hours on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for committee chair Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) declined to comment to TPM.

Pak reportedly told the panel that senior DOJ officials had suggested that Trump planned on firing him. The former president was purportedly enraged that Pak’s office and the FBI had found no basis for his Big Lie claims of voter fraud in Fulton County, Georgia.

TPM first reported Pak’s resignation in January, which came one day after a recording was released of a phone call in which Trump pressured Georgia Gov. Brad Raffensperger (R) to flip the state from Biden to Trump.

Pak’s reported account to the panel hews to what the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, that White House officials forced Pak’s resignation for not doing “enough” to investigate voter fraud.

The former prosecutor reportedly told the committee on Wednesday that neither the FBI nor state investigators had found any evidence to back up Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Fulton County, Georiga.

Pak’s testimony comes after the DOJ authorized Trump-era law enforcement officials to speak about the Big Lie to Congress. Former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen testified on Saturday, and former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue testified on Friday about efforts by the White House to overturn the election results.

The House Oversight Committee released notes that Donoghue compiled during a late-December phone call in which Trump pressured him and Rosen to declare that the election was corrupt.

After being challenged, Trump purportedly told the two that, “you guys may not be following the internet the way I do.”

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Notable Replies

  1. Is that what prosecutors call yet another a smoking gun?

    Asking for a country…

  2. Needs corroboration to be smoking.

  3. Not by itself, but it’s more good evidence of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States. 18 U.S.C. § 371. And since the person telling Pak he was going to be fired is almost certainly Jeffrey Clark, Trump’s co-conspirator in their fraudulent scheme, his statements to Pak would also constitute evidence against Trump.

  4. Avatar for caltg caltg says:

    When are we going to start seeing indictments of people like Jeffrey Clark and, oh I don’t know . . .Donald Trump???!!?

    Just askin.’

  5. More so

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