The hearing began just hours after federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, one of the key Justice Department figures involved in Trump’s schemes. He denied committing any wrongdoing related to January 6th.
Here are the conclusions of Thursday’s hearing.
Thursday’s hearing highlighted the role Trump’s Republican allies in Congress have played in continuing his efforts to try to cancel the election – and how many have asked for clemency since Jan. 6.
The House of Representatives Electoral Committee focused in particular on the efforts of Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican who linked Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to the White House in December 2020.
CNN previously reported on the role played by Perry, and the commission released text messages in court documents, which Perry exchanged with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about Clark.
“He wanted Mr. Clark – Mr. Jeff Clark – to take over the Department of Justice,” Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Meadows associate, told Perry in a video of her testimony released at Thursday’s hearing.
The commission also revealed new details about Republican members of Congress seeking pardon after Jan. 6, including Perry and representatives Mo Brooks of Alabama and Matt Gates of Florida.
“President Trump has asked me to send you this letter. This letter is also in line with a request from Matt Gaetz,” Brooks said in an email sent to the White House in January 2021, according to the commission. “As such, I recommend that the president give general (universal) pardons to the following groups of people.”
The email includes a group of “every congressman and senator who has voted to reject the Arizona and Pennsylvania Electoral College.”
Thursday’s hearing was chaired by a spokesman, Adam Kinzinger, a Illinois Republican who was largely ostracized by the Republican conference for his role on the committee on Jan. 6.
“My colleagues up here are also taking an oath. Some of them failed to stand their ground and instead chose to spread the big lie,” Kinzinger said before discussing the pardon.
Kinzinger resigns after the end of his term.
During a meeting in the Oval Office in December 2020
The hearing gave life to the high-stakes meeting in the Oval Office in December 2020, where Trump was considering firing the attorney general and appointing Clark, who was willing to use the powers of federal law enforcement to encourage U.S. lawmakers to undo the loss. of Trump. we already knew a lot about the meeting during these summer hearings. But on Thursday, for the first time, we heard live testimony from some of the Justice Department officials who were in the room, including Rosen, the then Attorney General. (He survived the meeting after Trump was told he would resign en masse from the Justice Department if he replaced Rosen with Clark.)
Trump’s White House lawyer Eric Hershman said Clark was repeatedly “hit on the head” during the meeting. He told the commission he called Clark “devilish” and said his plans were illegal. He also said Clark’s plan to send letters to the states on the battlefield was “crazy.”
In a video statement released Thursday, Donohue said he gutted Clark’s powers during the meeting, explaining that Clark was grossly under-qualified to serve as attorney general.
“You are an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office and we will call you when there is an oil spill,” Donohue said in testimony, describing what he told Clark at the White House meeting.
Donohue said then-White House adviser Pat Chipolon called Clark’s plan a “murder and suicide pact.”
Donohue himself described Clark’s plan as “impossible” and “absurd.”
“This will never happen,” Donohue said of the plan. “And it will fail.”
Thanks to the repulsion of Rosen, Donohue, Hershman, Chipolone, and perhaps others, Trump failed to carry out his plan, which would put the country in unexplored waters and increase Trump’s chances of successfully carrying out his coup attempt.
Italian satellites and seizure of voting machines: White House pushes conspiracy theory
The three witnesses who testified on Thursday made it clear that Trump tried to use all the levers of the federal government to help confirm his claim that the election was stolen and ultimately overturn the legal result before January 6.
They described how senior officials at the highest levels of government were forced to investigate conspiracy theories stemming from the far corners of the Internet as Trump tried to confirm baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud.
Then-Secretary of Defense Chris Miller even contacted a colleague in Rome at the request of the White House to investigate a conspiracy theory that Italian satellites changed the voices from Trump to Joe Biden.
The conspiracy theory, which CNN previously reported was among those forced by then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to force senior national security officials to investigate, was described as “pure madness” by a former Treasury Department official. Justice Richard Donohue, who was also asked to consider the claim.
Former Justice Department officials also described in detail how Trump himself called on senior Homeland Security officials to seize voting machines from US governments in pursuit of the same – and all for no reason to take such an unprecedented step.
“Why don’t you just confiscate machines?” Trump said during a White House meeting in late December 2020, according to Donohue.
Using the Department of Justice or any other federal agency to seize voting machines would be an unprecedented step, but Trump has made it clear that he wants his allies to pursue him as an option.
“Get Ken Cucinelli on the phone,” Trump shouted at his secretary after Justice Department officials told him DHS had experience in voting machines and decided there was nothing to seize them, Rosen said.
Rosen confirmed on Thursday that he had never told Trump that DHS could confiscate voting machines. CNN previously reported that Trump had prompted the Department of Justice and DHS to confiscate voting machines.
CNN also reported earlier that Trump’s allies had issued executive orders that would have led the military and DHS to seize voting machines if they had been signed by Trump – but in the end they were not.
The softened hearing included a vivid description of Trump’s campaign of pressure
Thursday’s trial included testimony from three lawyers describing behind-the-scenes events at the Justice Department and the White House. It was a departure from Tuesday’s hearings and earlier hearings, which included emotional testimony from election officials and included shocking video montages of the Capitol massacre.
But even without the rhetorical fireworks, the content of the testimony was essential to understanding the breadth of Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election. Former Justice Department officials described what they saw and heard as Trump tried to attracted to help him stay in power – and how he tried to overthrow them when they refused to obey his orders.
The material was dense at times. Witnesses reconstructed White House meetings and telephone conversations with Trump. They were asked to break down their handwritten notes on some of these interactions – something you see more often at criminal trials and less often at hearings in Congress.
Yet the solid testimony of witnesses sheds new light on the events we have known about for more than a year. And the whole hearing evoked memories of the Nixon era, because it was about how the incumbent president tried to arm the powers of federal law enforcement to help his political campaign.
The shocking attack on Clark’s home preceded the hearing
The attack by federal investigators at Clark’s home in northern Virginia preceded revelations about Clark’s 2020 actions at the hearing. Lawmakers were caught unprepared, but for the first time in a while, it seemed that federal investigators may have heeded their public calls to finally take action.
The attack took place on Wednesday, but was reported on Thursday morning. It is not clear which state body was behind the attack and it is not publicly known what caused the search of his home or what investigators were looking for.
Even with these unanswered questions, it is important that federal investigators take such a blatant step – by breaking into Clark’s home – against one of the most prominent figures in Trump’s post-election schemes.
The committee hoped to make Clark a name on Thursday by extracting testimony from senior Justice Department officials about how he tried to abuse law enforcement powers to help Trump overturn the 2020 results in the United States. who lost. With the attack, the commission appears to have fulfilled its wish.
This story was updated with additional developments on Thursday.
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