Durbin: Trump’s Final Days ‘Were Half a Step Away’ From a ‘Full Blown Constitutional Crisis’

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Thursday on CNN’s “New Day” that after the 2020 presidential election Donald Trump was “half a step away from a constitutional crisis” because he tried to “take over the Department of Justice and the attorney general.”

Discussing the new Senate Judiciary Committee report on Donald Trump’s actions after the 2020 election, Durbin said, “We can see evidence of that in our report that we’re really seeing from the Judiciary Committee. It was some of the most preposterous ideas, Italy-gate. I think you remember that supposedly some Italian satellites were hooked up to the Dominion voting machines, bizarre theories, being pushed by the White House, of course, Trump White House, on the Department of Justice. That was part of the problem here. They were trying to get investigations, Mark Meadows was calling for them, the president was calling for them, of claims that had already been completely discredited. They wanted to create a scenario and commentary they could take to the states and tell them to overturn the results of the election. So, yes, I know that Giuliani was hard at work. He’s been disbarred for his efforts and Powell the same. Making statements which she couldn’t back up when she was called on.”

Anchor John Berman said,  “Based on this report, which you are releasing this morning, how close was it in a way to working?”

Durbin said, “We were half a step away from a constitutional crisis, a full-blown constitutional crisis. Understand the three phases. First phase, Trump goes to court. Loses every lawsuit, which claims there was voter fraud in the election. Next, he decides he has to take over the Department of Justice and the attorney general. And have the attorney general push this narrative on to the states to tell them to stop from sending in their electoral college vote totals.”

He added, “When that failed, and our report goes into graphic detail of the efforts that were made, the third step was to turn the mob loose on the Capitol the day we were counting the ballots. Those are the three phases. Our report shows in detail how relentless this president was, were it not for Jeffrey Rosen, Richard Donoghue, and eight members of the Department of Justice who said we’ll resign if you take Rosen out of the picture and put Clark in, Jeffrey Clark in, if those efforts weren’t made, we could have seen a collapse of that Department of Justice into a political entity. They already had their handpicked successor, man named Jeffrey Clark, ready to take over. He was involved in areas that he should not have even touched as head of the civil division. ”

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