ATLANTA — Former President Donald Trump considered removing the acting attorney general over his refusal to overturn the election results in Georgia, sources told the New York Times.

Jeffrey Rosen replaced Attorney General William Barr on Dec. 24 after Barr publicly broke with Trump over the former president’s unproven claims of election fraud and later resigned.

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Georgia was one of Trump’s primary targets in his attempts to cast doubt on current President Joe Biden’s victory. Biden won Georgia by a slim margin of just under 13,000 votes, flipping the state blue for the first time since 1992. The margin was slim enough to allow Trump to ask for a recount.

Georgia elections officials said that both the massive, by-hand recount and a vote audit proved Biden’s victory. Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger repeatedly defended the election process in Georgia, despite mounting pressure from Trump to declare him the winner and several lawsuits on behalf of the president.

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Even after most of those lawsuits were thrown out, Trump spent months challenging the election results in the state, claiming that there was widespread voter fraud, railing against “signature matching” on mail-in ballots and finally asking Raffensperger to “find him” more votes in a recorded phone call.

According to the Times, Trump then turned to Rosen to ask him to force state lawmakers to overturn the results in Georgia.

When Rosen refused, the Times said, Trump thought about replacing Rosen with another lawyer who was a Trump loyalist, Jeffrey Clark.

The Justice Department’s top leaders agreed on a conference call that if Trump fired Rosen, they would all resign, the Times reported.

That was enough to persuade Trump not to fire Rosen in the final days of his presidency, sources said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is now calling for the Justice Department to investigate.

Articles of Impeachment were brought by the House of Representatives against Trump last week. The trial is expected to start in the Senate on Feb. 8.

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