The January 6 hearing on Thursday told things not previously known concerning Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department as part of his plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power.
The hearing began mere hours after federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, who Trump wanted to install as Attorney General replacing Jeffrey Rosen who had replaced William Barr just days before.
The witnesses were acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy, Richard Donoghue and Steven Engle who led the department’s Office of Legal Council. They join a growing list of Republicans who have gone under oath to provide damning information about Trump’s coup plot.
As he did with state officials testifying on Tuesday, Donald Trump hounded the Justice Department to pursue his false election fraud claims, striving in vain to enlist top law enforcement officials in his desperate bid to stay in power and hosting a dramatic Oval Office showdown in which he weighed replacing the agency’s leader with a more compliant lower-level official , Jeffrey Clark.
Three Trump-era Justice Department officials recounted a relentless pressure campaign from the president, including day after day of directives to chase unsupported allegations that the election won by Democrat Joe Biden had been stolen. It appeared that Trump spent his days scouring the internet for election fraud conspiracy theories. The officials described the constant contact as a stark breach of protocol for a department that cherishes its independence from the White House but said they swatted away each demand because there was zero evidence of widespread voter fraud.
“For the department to insert itself into the political process this way, I think would have had grave consequences for the country that very well may have spiraled us into a constitutional crisis,” said Richard Donoghue, the acting No. 2 official in the final days of the Trump administration. The president, he said, had this “arsenal of allegations. I went through them piece by piece to say, no, they were not true.”
Jeffrey Rosen, who was acting attorney general, said he was called by Trump or met with him basically every day from the time he ascended to the post in late December 2020 through early January 2021, with the common theme being “dissatisfaction about what the Justice Department had done to investigate election fraud.”
It all added up to a “brazen attempt” to use the Justice Department for his own political gain, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and co-chairman of the Jan. 6 committee. “Donald Trump didn’t just want the Justice Department to investigate,” Thompson said. “He wanted the Justice Department to help legitimize his lies, to basically call the election corrupt” and to appoint a special counsel. The Justice Department resisted each demand.
Trump was introduced by a Republican congressman, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, to Clark, who’d joined the department in 2018 as its chief environmental lawyer and was later appointed to run its civil division. Clark, according to statements from other Justice Department officials, met with Trump despite being ordered not to by bosses at the department and presented himself as eager to aid the president’s efforts to challenge the election results.
A draft of the letter had been provided to Clark by a newly arrived Justice official, Ken Klukowski. Liz Cheney said Thursday that Klukowski had been assigned “to work under Jeffrey Clark” and that he helped draft the letter to key states. In addition, Cheney said that Klukowski “also worked with John Eastman,” the Trump legal adviser who was involved in other plans seeking to overturn the election. Cheney said the letter echoed some of Eastman’s theories. In my view, Trump/Eastman placed Klukowski under Clark to guide the incompetent Trump follower. Two sources said Klukowski has cooperated with the committee, but it did not release his testimony; his lawyer declined to comment on Thursday night. Eastman and his lawyer could not be reached.
Clark took ownership of the letter pushing Georgia officials to convene a special legislative session to reconsider the election results. Clark wanted the letter sent, but superiors at the Justice Department refused.
In one phone conversation with Trump, according to handwritten notes taken by Donoghue and highlighted at Thursday’s hearing, Trump directed to Rosen to “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.”
(The panel played recorded interviews of Trump aides saying that multiple Republican members of Congress requested pardons in the days after the violent riot at the Capitol. Representatives Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry, and Marjorie Taylor Greene asked for pardons, testimony showed.)
The situation came to a head on Jan. 3, 2021, a Sunday, when Clark informed Rosen in a private meeting at the Justice Department that Trump wanted to replace him with Clark as acting attorney general. Clark was willing to use the powers of federal law enforcement to encourage state lawmakers to overturn the election. Rosen resisted, contacted senior Justice Department officials to inform them of the situation and his intent to resign and also requested a White House meeting.
That night, Rosen, Donoghue and Engel, along with Clark, gathered with Trump and top White House lawyers for a contentious, hours-long Oval Office meeting .
According to testimony given by Rosen, Trump opened the meeting by saying, “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election.”
Donoghue eviscerated Clark’s credentials explaining that Clark was woefully under qualified and incompetent to serve as attorney general. Clark responded saying, ‘Well, I’ve done a lot of very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that,’” Donoghue said. “And I said, ‘That’s right. You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.’”
Donoghue and Engel made clear to Trump that they and large numbers of other Justice Department officials would resign if Trump fired Rosen. White House lawyers said the same. Pat Cipollone, then the White House counsel, said the letter that Clark wanted to send was a “murder-suicide pact.”
“Steve Engel at one point said, ‘Jeff Clark will be leading a graveyard. And what are you going to get done with a graveyard,’ that there would be such an exodus of the leadership,” Donoghue told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “So it was very strongly worded to the president that that would happen.”
In a White House phone log 2 hours before the meeting, it recorded Jeffery Clark as acting Attorney General appearing that Trump had made the decision but backed off after the meeting. In my view, because the blowback from this would upset his plans for January 6.
Trump didn’t care if there was real fraud or not, he just wanted the Justice Department to issue a letter to lend some doubt about the election to b ouster his supporters and put things into chaos.
Thanks to Rosen, Donoghue, Herschman and Cipollone, Trump didn’t follow through on his plan, which would have put the country into uncharted waters, and would have increased the chances of Trump successfully pulling off the coup attempt.
Lawmakers on Thursday played a videotaped deposition showing Clark invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination 125 times.
The raid by federal investigators of Clark’s northern Virginia home preceded the revelations go Clarks actions at the hearing. Lawmakers were caught off-guard. It seemed like federal investigators may have finally heeded their public calls fro action. In order for the FBI to obtain a search warrant they must have evidence of a crime and convince a guard that evidence could be destroyed.