Trump DOJ's national security chief almost quit when president demanded he overturn the election: report

Justice Department director of national security John Demers is telling all about his experience in the final months of President Donald Trump's administration.

According to an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Demers described the horrifying scene when he was told to save the 2020 election for Trump using the DOJ.

"I didn't know what was going to happen, I thought that there was a real chance that would be my last day in the department," said Demers in an interview with the Journal ahead of his resignation.

At the time, Trump was threatening to fire the acting attorney general who took over when Bill Barr resigned to spend more time with his family.

Demers said he was "trying to figure out who would sign foreign intelligence surveillance requests and conduct other agency business if he resigned in protest along with other leading officials."

There was a question of timing with Demers's resignation. It came just as the DOJ was being outed for a leak investigation that involved warrants to spy on reporters, members of Congress, their staff and families.

"The 49-year-old Mr. Demers continued to run the national security division under President Biden, the only senior official at the Justice Department from the Trump administration to remain in the job," said the report. "That continuity suggests that, while other parts of the department have shifted priorities, the national security efforts are likely to stay in place, former officials said."

On the way out, Demers is singing his own praises of the work he did over intellectual property in China as part of the 2018 "China Initiative." Critics of the program complain that it has turned suspicion that any Chinese scientist or researcher in the United States could be a spy, increasing racist suspicions.

One case involving a mechanical engineering professor over paperwork errors turned into a criminal offense. Demers painted it as a program that helps protect Chinese citizens in the United States from China, which considers to be fugitives.

Demers was also the one behind the FISA investigation into Carter Page and whether or not it was improperly done by former President Barack Obama's Justice Department.

Read the full exit interview at the Wall Street Journal.