Former Justice Department officials who successfully resisted Donald Trump’s relentless pressure campaign regarding the results of the 2020 presidential election while stifling an odd challenge from within their own ranks will testify before the committee on January 6.
The hearing on Thursday will highlight a notoriously turbulent period at the department during which Trump sought, in his final days in office, to subjugate a law enforcement organisation that had long cherished its independence from the White House.
The testimony aims to demonstrate how Trump not only relied on outside advisors to advance his claims of election fraud but also attempted to use the authority of federal executive branch agencies.
Jeffrey Rosen, who served as acting attorney general during the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, will be one of the witnesses. Three days prior, Trump debated replacing Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a lower-level official who wished to support Trump’s allegations of election fraud. Rosen was a part of that tense Oval Office showdown.
Steven Engel and Richard Donoghue, Rosen’s top deputy, are the other two former department officials scheduled to give testimony. At the White House meeting, both cautioned Trump that if he chose to replace Rosen with Clark, they would both resign and a sizable number of the department’s attorneys would do the same.
Donoghue has claimed he told Trump, “You could have a situation here, you have hundreds leaving the Justice Department within 24 hours. Is that advantageous to anyone? Does it benefit the department? Is it advantageous to the nation? Is it healthy for you? Not at all.
Former US Attorney General Bill Barr expressed his worries about how “crazy” former President Donald Trump’s election fraud claims appeared in his taped testimony to the House special committee on the U.S. Capitol Riot.
The committee looking into the events leading up to the Capitol Insurrection, when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the building as lawmakers certified the results of Joe Biden’s victory, has held five hearings this month. Witnesses have included the Capitol-area police officers who were assaulted, as well as lawyers, a television executive, and local election officials who all resisted calls to tamper with the results in Trump’s favour.
Last week, the committee heard from former attorney general William Barr, who called Trump’s allegations of fraud “bulls—,” “bogus,” and “idiotic” and resigned after failing to persuade the president of this.
The focus of the hearing on Thursday will be on what transpired after Rosen, Barr’s top deputy, assumed leadership of the division and was confronted with demands from Trump for the Justice Department to take action.
According to Donoghue’s handwritten notes from a phone call, which was made public by lawmakers last year, Trump told Rosen to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen” in one instance.”
Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, a Republican congressman, introduced Trump to Clark at about that time. Clark had joined the department in 2018 as its chief environmental lawyer and had since been appointed to lead its civil division. Although the committee had earlier summoned Clark to give a deposition, he won’t be one of the witnesses on Thursday.
Other Justice Department officials have claimed that Clark met with Trump despite departmental managers’ orders to the contrary and gave the impression that he was eager to support the president’s efforts to challenge the election results.
A draught letter urging Georgia officials to call a special legislative session to reconsider the election results were included in a report written by the Senate Judiciary Committee last year that painted Clark as a tenacious supporter of Trump.
On January 3, 2021, a Sunday, the situation reached a head when Rosen was informed by Clark in a private meeting at the Justice Department that Trump wanted to replace him with Clark as acting attorney general.
In response, Rosen reportedly said, “There was no universe I could imagine in which that would ever happen.” “and that he would not consent to be let go by an inferior.
The White House was then contacted by Rosen to set up a meeting. That evening, Rosen, Donoghue, Engel, and Clark met in the Oval Office with Trump and the top lawyers for the White House to discuss whether the president ought to carry out his plans for a significant change in the department’s leadership. The meeting lasted for hours.
Rosen testified that Trump said in the meeting’s opening statement, “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election.”
Donoghue and Engel made it clear to Trump that if Rosen was terminated, many other Justice Department employees would also resign. The White House’s legal team concurred. At one point, Pat Cipollone, the then-White House attorney, claimed that the letter Clark intended to send as a “murder-suicide pact.”
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“Steve Engel once said Jeff Clark would be in charge of a cemetery. That there would be such a leadership exodus, and what are you going to do with a graveyard,'” Donoghue told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As a result, the president received a very direct warning that would occur. This gave him the legal authority to act as he pleased because he was not a criminal prosecutor in the department.
And in a way, he responded, “Well, I’ve done a lot of very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that,” Added Donoghue. “And I replied, “That’s correct. You practise law in the environment. Why don’t you return to work and we’ll call you when there is an oil spill?
