Trump impeachment: Bombshell report says president tried to oust acting AG to overturn the election results

Only days after Donald Trump returned to private life, The New York Times published a blockbuster new story on his efforts to overturn the election.

"The Justice Department's top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department's power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results," The New York Times reported Friday evening.

"The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump's continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president's entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark," the newspaper reported. "The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed? The answer was unanimous. They would resign."

"Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump's decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump's reality show "The Apprentice," albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis," the newspaper explained.

The bombshell report was "based on interviews with four former Trump administration officials who asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation."

Read the full report.