The White House forced the US lawyer from Georgia to resign

Mr Pak abruptly resigned Monday – the day before the layoffs – and said in an early morning email to his colleagues that his departure was due to “unforeseen circumstances”.

The pressure on Mr. Pak was part of a week’s pressure by Mr. Trump to try to change the results of the presidential election in favor of President-elect Joe Biden, including his victory in Georgia. Trump said this week, after the riot in the US Capitol, he would leave office on Jan. 20 when Mr. Biden is inaugurated.

The recently departed Attorney General William Barr has said the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could reverse Mr Biden’s victory, including allegations of fraud, ballot box destruction and voting machine manipulation.

Dozens of state and federal court rulings have also spurned the efforts of Mr. Trump and his supporters. And Congress formally confirmed Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory on Thursday, after a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and forced a delay in the process.

The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mr Pak did not respond to requests for comment.

The resignation of Mr. Pak came a day after the public release of the audio of a January 2 call in which Mr. Trump had urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to reverse the November election results. Trump told Mr. Raffensperger in the roughly an hour-long appeal that the Georgian Republican could take legal action and said he would need to get nearly 12,000 five million votes cast to undo Mr. Biden’s victory in the state.

Mr. Raffensperger rejected pressure to further investigate an election, telling the president, “The challenge you have is that the data you have is incorrect.”

The president also complained about the phone call that Mr. Pak was a “never trumper”.

Georgia made recounts that did not change the outcome. Mr. Raffensperger and other Georgian officials have investigated several allegations and found no evidence of widespread fraud.

It is not known whether the appeal of the Justice Department official to Mr. Pak took place before or after the recording of Raffensperger was made public.

When a U.S. attorney leaves the post, the second officer in the office usually takes over on an interim basis until a new top plaintiff is appointed. In this case, Mr. Trump bypassed that typical process and immediately named U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Georgia, Bobby Christine, to take the job in an acting capacity. Atlanta falls in the Northern District of Georgia, and there is a separate Middle District in the state.

Mr. Christine declined to comment.

Mr. Christine, a Trump-appointed person, took up the post on Monday, January 4, the same day as Mr. Pak’s resignation, by written order from the president.

Trump also personally called an aide to the Georgia secretary of state and demanded that it provide evidence of electoral fraud, an official for the Georgia secretary of state said Saturday. The president did so in December before contacting Mr. Raffensperger separately.

An official with the Georgia secretary of state said Saturday that the White House had been calling office officials and staff for weeks to demand proof of electoral fraud – long before Mr. Raffensperger was called.

“They were desperate for evidence for lawsuits that were about to be thrown out of court,” the Georgian official said. “They kept telling us, ‘You have to give us the evidence’ and the truth is, there is no evidence whatsoever to provide.”

The Georgia official said staffers were concerned when they learned that Mr. Pak had resigned, fearing the White House would call in people to investigate them. “Retaliation was a major concern,” the official said.

The Washington Post reported the phone conversation between Mr. Trump and the Secretary of State earlier Saturday.

Agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Atlanta also found the state’s election fraud allegations were missing and saw no need to prosecute them, people familiar with the case said. The FBI’s Atlanta office declined to comment.

Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Raffensperger came when the president and his supporters had been pushing since November to reverse the election results in Georgia, including through public attacks on the Republican governor of the state and other officials by Mr. Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others.

Speaking to Mr Raffensperger, Ryan Germany, the Secretary of State’s General Counsel, said to the President, “What we see is not at all what you describe.”

At one point during the weekend conversation with Mr. Raffensperger, in which Mr. Trump repeatedly complained about alleged irregularities in Fulton County, including most of Atlanta, Mr. Trump apparently referred to Mr. Pak and said, “I mean, you have your Never Trumper American attorney out there. ”

Colleagues and employees of Mr. Pak said they would tell Mr. Pak as a proud and early supporter of Mr. Trump, who nominated him for his post in July 2017. Mr. Pak thanked the president by name during his inauguration. the Senate confirmed him in the post two months later, and again in the brief statement he released on his resignation. “I am grateful to President Trump and the United States Senate for the opportunity to serve, and to Attorneys General (Jeff) Sessions and (William) Barr for their leadership of the department,” said Mr. Pak.

Pak had interviewed law firms in recent months and found a job in the private sector, but planned to remain in the post until the end of Mr. Trump’s tenure, said people familiar with Mr. Pak’s plans. .

—Rebecca Ballhaus contributed to this article.

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at [email protected], Sadie Gurman at [email protected] and Cameron McWhirter at [email protected]