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Richard Donohue, acting Donald Trump’s deputy attorney general, picked up the phone at home in December 2020 to hear the United States president again insist that the election he just lost was fraudulent.
He reached for his wife’s nightstand, picked up a pad and pen, and made accurate notes, scribbling in loose italics as Trump said, “Just say the election is corrupt + leave the rest to me and the congressmen from R.”
On Thursday, these same handwritten notes lit up a huge video panel in a hearing room amid a captivating afternoon of testimony before a House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
New details emerge about the confrontation in the Oval Office three days before January 6
Donohue and two other former senior Justice officials as well told the commission in great detail how he – along with the current Attorney General and Trump’s own adviser in the White House and others – confronted the president in an explosive meeting in the Oval Office on January 3, 2021.
The meeting focused on a plan by mid-level justice representative Jeffrey Clark to become attorney general. New details released during the hearing revealed how close the Ministry of Justice was to the collapse and throwing the country into an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
Among those details: a possible connection between Clark, another justice official, and John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who is making parallel efforts on behalf of Trump to get states to cancel the election. And White House telephone records, in which Clark was once named as acting attorney general, showing how close he was to taking office.
Much of the dramatic testimony this summer afternoon in Washington has already been described in detail in dry testimony and previously published court documents. But presented with raw emotion on Tuesday, those details came with new weight as some of Trump’s former top aides called out his lies about the election, still sounding shocked and contemptuous by what they witnessed.
In a series of startling moments broadcast on national television by the millions, the humiliating testimony of senior national law enforcement officials was the closest thing to an investigation to the events that took place half a century ago in the Watergate scandal.
Instead of White House tapes, there were handwritten notes and testimonies of conversations in the Oval Office from Donohue, former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, and others. Instead of Presidential Adviser Richard M. Nixon in the White House warning of “cancer in the presidency,” there was a story by Trump’s White House adviser Pat Chipolon, who said the attempted election was like a “murder pact.” “suicide” would affect everyone involved.
And in response to how Saturday night’s Nixon massacre led to the resignation of his attorney general and deputy attorney general, Donohue warned Trump that hundreds of Justice Department officials could resign if the president replaces his attorney general with mid-level employee. who promised to pursue Trump’s claims.
“Suppose I do that. Suppose he replaces him, Jeff Rosen, with him, Jeff Clark, what are you going to do? Donohue remembered that Trump had asked him. “And I said, ‘Mr. President, we are resigning immediately. I don’t work a minute for this man, whom I just declared to be completely incompetent.
At the center of Thursday’s hearing was the emergency clash sparked by mid-level justice clerk Clark, who once oversaw environmental litigation and then became acting head of the civil division.
After William P. Barr resigned in late December 2020 as chief prosecutor, he was replaced by Rosen, who, along with his deputy, Donohue, testified to Trump’s many efforts to convince them that the election was fraudulent. When Rosen and Donohue checked every allegation and told Trump they were all baseless, Trump began to focus on whether Rosen should be replaced by the little-known Clark.
Clark had an ally in Representative, Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Who arranged a meeting with Trump at the White House. The commission showed texts from Perry to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in which Perry said, “Mark, you need to call Jeff. I just talked to him, explaining how Clark needed more authority. Perry then sent Meadows that “just sent you something in Signal,” an application that sends encrypted messages.
When Rosen learned that Clark had met with Trump, he was furious. Rosen testified that he believed Clark would not meet with Trump again – but Clark did, even though Rosen and Donohue told him not to, according to the testimony.
The committee outlined how Trump’s demands to his justice ministry are becoming increasingly bizarre. On New Year’s Eve, former Justice Department officials testified, they were summoned to a meeting with Trump, who rushed back to Washington from a vacation at his Florida Mar-a-Lago mansion.
During the meeting, Donohue testified that Trump said he wanted to appoint a special lawyer to investigate the election, even though Justice Department officials have repeatedly told him that no special lawyer is required. Then Trump turned his attention to the voting machines. “There was a moment when the president said something about why you don’t confiscate these machines?” Donohue testified.
Justice officials have explained that they have no right to confiscate voting machines – and there is no evidence that anything went wrong with the machines, as confirmed by Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security.
Trump then called Ken Cucinelli, acting DHS deputy secretary, and falsely told him that the acting attorney general had just said that Cucinelli’s job was to confiscate voting machines, “and you’re not doing your job. “.
The next day, January 1, Meadows sent a series of increasingly desperate emails to Rosen. In one, he suggested that Rosen send Clark to Georgia to observe the election. In another, Meadows asked Rosen to consider a strange theory that an Italian defense attorney had used satellites to transfer votes from Trump to Biden.
The committee revealed that Meadows learned of the unfounded conspiracy theory from Perry, who sent an SMS to Meadows about it on December 31.
Rosen testified that he told Meadows that he would not meet with a man who passed the theory, nor with Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who, according to Meadows, was also interested in the Italian conspiracy. “Pure madness,” Donohue emailed Rosen about the pressure at the time.
Rosen testified that he believed his refusals put an end to the issue.
Instead, Donohue testified that he received a call from Defense Department official Kash Patel on the matter. The commission released recorded testimony from former acting Secretary of Defense Christopher S. Miller, confirming that he had also sent calls about the strange conspiracy theory. Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) Said the commission had confirmed that Miller had called an attache in Italy to ask about the allegation.
Clark, meanwhile, has come up with a proposed letter that will be sent to key states, urging lawmakers to take steps that could cancel the election. The letter said the Department of Justice had “identified significant concerns” about the vote and that states should consider sending “a separate voter list in support of Donald J. Trump “for approval by Congress.
A draft of the letter was sent to Clark by a recently arrived justice official, Ken Klukowski. Commission Vice-Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) Said on Thursday that Klukowski had been appointed “to work under Jeffrey Clark” and that he had helped draft the letter to key countries. Cheney also said that Klukowski “also worked with John Eastman.” A legal adviser to Trump who is involved in other plans to cancel the election. Cheney said the letter reflected some of Eastman’s theories. Two sources said Klukowski cooperated with the commission, but it did not disclose his testimony; his The lawyer declined to comment Thursday night. Eastman and his lawyer were not reached.
At the bottom of the letter was a place to be signed not only by Clark but also by Rosen and Donohue. The two senior justice officials were outraged and told Clark that there was no such evidence and that they would never sign the letter. They thought the matter was dead.
Donohue told the commission that at one point he told Clark that what he was doing would have “severe consequences for the country”, adding: “I wanted to make sure he understood the seriousness of the situation because he didn’t seem to really appreciate it. ”
Clark persisted in winning over Trump, who was in the mood for the idea.
By January 3, 2020, Trump was so fed up with Rosen and Donohue that he told Clark to be ready to be named Attorney General. The call logs, published by the commission on Thursday, show that Clark called the White House four times that day as he appears to be taking over the Department of Justice.
At 7:07 a.m. and again at 7:38 a.m., the log files show calls from “Mr. Jeffrey Clark. “Again at 1:13 p.m., the diary reflected a call from Mr. Jeffrey Clark.”
But when Clark called again at 4:19 p.m., the diaries showed otherwise. This time, Clark was listed as “acting Attorney General Jeffrey Clark.” The details in the diary provide a startling window on how close the country has come to Trump to carry out his plan.
In fact, Rosen did not resign at the time and was not removed. Instead, he requested a meeting with Trump instead of agreeing to step down at Clark’s request. Rosen called Donohue, who was walking down the muddy National Mall and was still wearing an army T-shirt, and they rushed to the Oval Office to intervene.
For two and a half hours, Trump met with Clark, Rosen, Donohue, and White House attorneys. Clark told …
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