[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                HEARING ON THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

=======================================================================


                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                          SELECT COMMITTEE TO
                      INVESTIGATE THE JANUARY 6TH
                             ATTACK ON THE
                         UNITED STATES CAPITOL

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                             JUNE 23, 2022

                               __________

                            Serial No. 117-6

                               __________

Printed for the use of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th 
                    Attack on the United States Capitol
                                     

[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
                                     

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                               __________


                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
49-353                     WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------  

 SELECT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE JANUARY 6TH ATTACK ON THE UNITED 
                             STATES CAPITOL

               Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi, Chairman
                    Liz Cheney, Wyoming, Vice Chair
                        Zoe Lofgren, California
                       Adam B. Schiff, California
                        Pete Aguilar, California
                      Stephanie N. Murphy, Florida
                         Jamie Raskin, Maryland
                       Elaine G. Luria, Virginia
                        Adam Kinzinger, Illinois
                            
                            COMMITTEE STAFF

                    David B. Buckley, Staff Director
      Kristin L. Amerling, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
               Hope Goins, Senior Counsel to the Chairman
           Joseph B. Maher, Senior Counsel to the Vice Chair
             Timothy J. Heaphy, Chief Investigative Counsel
                      Jamie Fleet, Senior Advisor
               Timothy R. Mulvey, Communications Director
           Candyce Phoenix, Senior Counsel and Senior Advisor
 John F. Wood, Senior Investigative Counsel and Of Counsel to the Vice 
                                 Chair

Katherine B. Abrams, Staff		Thomas E. Joscelyn, Senior Professional 	 
    Associate                             Staff Member
Temidayo Aganga-Williams, Senior	Rebecca L. Knooihuizen, Financial 	 
    Investigative Counsel		  Investigator
Alejandra Apecechea, Investigative	Casey E. Lucier, Investigative Counsel 
    Counsel				Damon M. Marx, Professional Staff Member	
Lisa A. Bianco, Director of Member 	Evan B. Mauldin, Chief Clerk
    Services and Security Manager	Yonatan L. Moskowitz, Senior Counsel
Jerome P. Bjelopera, Investigator	Hannah G. Muldavin, Deputy 
Bryan Bonner, Investigative Counsel	  Communications Director
Richard R. Bruno, Senior 		Jonathan D. Murray, Professional Staff
    Administrative Assistant		  Member
Marcus Childress, Investigative 	Jacob A. Nelson, Professional Staff Member
    Counsel				Elizabeth Obrand, Staff Associate
John Marcus Clark, Security		Raymond O'Mara, Director of External
    Director				  Affairs
Jacqueline N. Colvett, Digital		Elyes Ouechtati, Technology Partner 
    Director				Robin M. Peguero, Investigative Counsel	
Heather I. Connelly, Professional	Sandeep A. Prasanna, Investigative Counsel
    Staff Member			Barry Pump, Parliamentarian
Meghan E. Conroy, Investigator		Sean M. Quinn, Investigative Counsel
Heather L. Crowell, Printer 		Brittany M. J. Record, Senior Counsel
    Proofreader				Denver Riggleman, Senior Technical Advisor
William C. Danvers, Senior 		Joshua D. Roselman, Investigative Counsel
    Researcher				James N. Sasso, Senior Investigative Counsel
Soumyalatha Dayananda, Senior 		Grant H. Saunders, Professional Staff 
    Investigative Counsel		  Member
Stephen W. DeVine, Senior Counsel	Samantha O. Stiles, Chief Administrative 
Lawrence J. Eagleburger, 		  Officer
    Professional Staff Member		Sean P. Tonolli, Senior Investigative 
Kevin S. Elliker, Investigative           Counsel
    Counsel				David A. Weinberg, Senior Professional Staff 
Margaret E. Emamzadeh, Staff 		  Member
    Associate				Amanda S. Wick, Senior Investigative 
Sadallah A. Farah, Professional 	  Counsel
    Staff Member			Darrin L. Williams, Jr., Staff Assistant
Daniel A. George, Senior 		Zachary S. Wood, Clerk
    Investigative Counsel
Jacob H. Glick, Investigative 
    Counsel
Aaron S. Greene, Clerk
Marc S. Harris, Senior 
    Investigative Counsel
Alice K. Hayes, Clerk
Quincy T. Henderson, Staff 
    Assistant
Jenna Hopkins, Professional Staff 
    Member
Camisha L. Johnson, Professional 
    Staff Member                                                           
                      
                      
                      CONTRACTORS & CONSULTANTS

                             Rawaa Alobaidi
                             Melinda Arons
                              Steve Baker
                            Elizabeth Bisbee
                              David Canady
                             John Coughlin
                             Aaron Dietzen
                              Gina Ferrise
                           Angel Goldsborough
                             James Goldston
                              Polly Grube
                          L. Christine Healey
                             Danny Holladay
                              Percy Howard
                              Dean Jackson
                           Stephanie J. Jones
                              Hyatt Mamoun
                               Mary Marsh
                               Todd Mason
                              Ryan Mayers
                              Jeff McBride
                               Fred Muram
                             Alex Newhouse
                              John Norton
                             Orlando Pinder
                               Owen Pratt
                              Dan Pryzgoda
                              Brian Sasser
                            William Scherer
                              Driss Sekkat
                              Chris Stuart
                            Preston Sullivan
                              Brian Young

                           Innovative Driven
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

                               Statements

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Select Committee 
  to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States 
  Capitol........................................................     1
The Honorable Liz Cheney, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Wyoming, and Vice Chair, Select Committee to 
  Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol     2
The Honorable Adam Kinzinger, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of Illinois..........................................     4

                               Witnesses

Mr. Jeffrey Rosen, Former Acting Attorney General................     8
Mr. Richard Donoghue, Former Acting Deputy Attorney General......     9
Mr. Steven A. Engel, Former Assistant Attorney General, Office of 
  Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice......................     9

                                Appendix

Prepared Statement of Jeffrey Rosen, Former Acting Attorney 
  General........................................................    43
Prepared Statement of Steven A. Engel, Former Assistant Attorney 
  General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice...    60

 
                HEARING ON THE JANUARY 6TH INVESTIGATION

                              ----------                              


                        Thursday, June 23, 2022

                     U.S. House of Representatives,
 Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on 
                                 the United States Capitol,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:02 p.m., in 
room 390, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Bennie G. Thompson 
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
    Present: Representatives Thompson, Cheney, Lofgren, Schiff, 
Aguilar, Murphy, Raskin, Luria, and Kinzinger.
    Chairman Thompson. The Select Committee to Investigate the 
January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol will be in 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
Committee in recess at any point.
    Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the 
Chair announces the Committee's approval to release the 
deposition material presented during today's hearing.
    Good afternoon.
    In our previous hearings, the Select Committee showed that 
then-President Trump applied pressure at every level of 
government, from local election workers up to his own Vice 
President, hoping public servants would give in to that 
pressure and help him steal an election he actually lost.
    Today, we will tell the story of how the pressure campaign 
also targeted the Federal agency charged with enforcement of 
our laws: The Department of Justice.
    We have already covered part of Mr. Trump's effort. We 
heard Attorney General Bill Barr tell the Committee about the 
baseless claims Mr. Trump wanted the Justice Department to 
investigate and that Mr. Barr viewed those claims as nonsense.
    Today, we will hear from Jeffrey Rosen, the person Mr. 
Trump appointed to run the Justice Department after Attorney 
General Barr resigned. We will hear from other senior Justice 
Department officials also.
    Together, these public servants resisted Mr. Trump's effort 
to misuse the Justice Department as part of his plan to hold 
onto power. We will show that Trump's demands that the 
Department investigate baseless claims of election fraud 
continued into January 2021.
    But Donald Trump didn't just want the Justice Department to 
investigate; he wanted the Justice Department to help 
legitimize his lies, to baselessly call the election corrupt, 
to appoint a special counsel to investigate alleged election 
fraud, to send a letter to six State legislatures urging them 
to consider altering the election results.
    When these and other efforts failed, Donald Trump sought to 
replace Mr. Rosen, the Acting Attorney General, with a lawyer 
who he believed would inappropriately put the full weight of 
the Justice Department behind the effort to overturn the 
election.
    Let's think about what that means.
    Wherever you live in the United States, there is probably a 
local government executive--a mayor or a county commissioner. 
There is also an official responsible for enforcing the laws--a 
district attorney or a local prosecutor.
    Imagine if your mayor lost a reelection bid but, instead of 
conceding the race, they picked up the phone, called the 
district attorney and said, ``I want you to say this election 
was stolen. I want you to tell the board of elections not to 
certify the results.''
    That is essentially what Donald Trump was trying to do with 
the election for President of the United States. It was a 
brazen attempt to use the Justice Department to advance the 
President's personal political agenda.
    Today, my colleague from Illinois, Mr. Kinzinger, and our 
witnesses will walk through the Select Committee's findings on 
these matters.
    But, first, I will recognize our distinguished Vice Chair, 
Ms. Cheney of Wyoming, for any opening statement she would care 
to offer.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    At this point, our Committee has just begun to show America 
the evidence that we have gathered. There is much more to come, 
both in our hearings and in our report. But I would like to 
take just a moment to put everything we have seen in context.
    We have already seen how President Trump falsely declared 
victory on November 3, 2020; how he and his team launched a 
fraudulent media campaign that persuaded tens of millions of 
Americans that the election was stolen from him.
    Donald Trump intentionally ran false ads on television and 
social media featuring allegations that his advisors and his 
Justice Department repeatedly told him were untrue.
    We have also seen how Donald Trump launched a fraudulent 
fundraising campaign that raised hundreds of millions of 
dollars--again--based on those same false election fraud 
allegations.
    We have seen how President Trump and his allies corruptly 
attempted to pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count 
lawful electoral votes and obstruct Congress's proceedings on 
January 6th and how he provoked a violent mob to pursue the 
Vice President and others in our Capitol.
    We have seen how the President oversaw and personally 
participated in an effort in multiple States to vilify, 
threaten, and pressure election officials and to use false 
allegations to pressure State legislators to change the outcome 
of the election.
    We have seen how President Trump worked with and directed 
the Republican National Committee and others to organize an 
effort to create fake electoral slates and, later, to transmit 
those materially false documents to Federal officials--again--
as part of his planning for January 6th.
    We have seen how President Trump persuaded tens of 
thousands of his supporters to travel to Washington, DC, for 
January 6th. We will see in far more detail how the President's 
rally and march to the Capitol were organized and 
choreographed.
    As you can tell, these efforts were not some minor or ad 
hoc enterprise concocted overnight. Each required planning and 
coordination. Some required significant funding. All of them 
were overseen by President Trump. Much more information will be 
presented soon regarding the President's statements and actions 
on January 6th.
    Today, as Chairman Thompson indicated, we turn to yet 
another element of the President's effort to overturn the 2020 
election, this one involving the Department of Justice.
    A key focus of our hearing today will be a draft letter 
that our witnesses here today refused to sign. This letter was 
written by Mr. Jeff Clark with another Department of Justice 
lawyer, Ken Klukowski, and the letter was to be sent to the 
leadership of the Georgia State legislature. Other versions of 
the letter were intended for other States.
    Neither Mr. Clark nor Mr. Klukowski had any evidence of 
widespread election fraud, but they were quite aware of what 
Mr. Trump wanted the Department to do. Jeff Clark met privately 
with President Trump and others in the White House and agreed 
to assist the President, without telling the senior leadership 
of the Department who oversaw him.
    As you will see, this letter claims that the U.S. 
Department of Justice's investigations have ``identified 
significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the 
election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.''
    In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie. The Department 
of Justice had already informed the President of the United 
States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud 
sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
    The letter also said this: ``In light of these 
developments, the Department recommends that the Georgia 
General Assembly should convene in special session'' and 
consider approving a new slate of electors.
    It indicates that a separate, fake ``slate of electors 
supporting Donald Trump'' has already been ``transmitted to 
Washington, DC.''
    For those of you who have been watching these hearings, the 
language of this draft Justice Department letter will sound 
very familiar. The text is similar to what we have seen from 
John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, both of whom were coordinating 
with President Trump to overturn the 2020 election.
    When one of our witnesses today, Mr. Donoghue, first saw 
this draft letter, he wrote this: ``This would be a grave step 
for the Department to take, and it could have tremendous 
constitutional, political, and social ramifications for the 
country.''
    This Committee agrees. Had this letter been released on 
official Department of Justice letterhead, it would have 
falsely informed all Americans, including those who might be 
inclined to come to Washington on January 6th, that President 
Trump's election fraud allegations were likely very real.
    Here is another observation about this letter. Look at the 
signature line. It was written by Jeff Clark and Mr. Klukowski 
not just for Clark's signature but also for our witnesses 
today, Jeff Rosen and Richard Donoghue.
    When it became clear that neither Mr. Rosen nor Mr. 
Donoghue would sign this letter, President Trump's plan 
necessarily changed. As you will hear today, Donald Trump 
offered Mr. Clark the job of Acting Attorney General, replacing 
Mr. Rosen, with the understanding that Clark would send this 
letter to Georgia and other States and take other actions the 
President requested.
    One other point: Millions of Americans have seen the 
testimony of Attorney General Barr before this Committee. At 
one point in his deposition, the former Attorney General was 
asked why he authorized the Department of Justice to 
investigate fraud in the 2020 election at all; why not just 
follow the regular course of action and let the investigations 
occur much later in time, after January 6th?
    Here is what he said.

    Attorney General Barr. I felt the responsible thing to do was to 
be--to be in a position to have a view as to whether or not there was 
fraud. And, frankly, I think the fact that I put myself in the position 
that I could say that we had looked at this and didn't think there was 
fraud was really important to moving things forward. And I--I sort-of 
shudder to think what the situation would have been if the--if the 
position of the Department was, ``We're not even looking at this until 
after Biden's in office.'' I'm not sure we would have had a transition 
at all.

    Vice Chair Cheney. I want to thank each of our witnesses 
before us today for your role in addressing and rebutting the 
false allegations of fraud at the root of January 6th. Thank 
you for standing up for the Constitution and for the rule of 
law.
    Of course, not all public officials behaved in the 
honorable way our witnesses did. At the close of today's 
hearing, we will see video testimony by three members of Donald 
Trump's White House staff. They will identify certain of the 
Members of Congress who contacted the White House after January 
6th to seek Presidential pardons for their conduct.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, the Chair recognizes 
the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Kinzinger, for an opening 
statement.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and 
thank you to our witnesses for being here.
    I would like to start with a personal story.
    So, in May 2009, I returned from service in Iraq and I 
announced my intention to run for Congress. A big reason I 
decided to run for Congress was my motivation to ensure freedom 
and democracy were defended overseas.
    I remember making a commitment--out loud a few times and in 
my heart repeatedly, even to today--that if we are going to ask 
Americans to be willing to die in service to our country, we as 
leaders must at least be willing to sacrifice our political 
careers when integrity and our oath requires it. After all, 
losing a job is nothing compared to losing your life.
    Within the halls of power, in the face of a President, that 
commitment can easily be forgotten. Presidential pressure can 
be really hard to resist.
    Today, we will focus on a few officials who stood firm 
against President Trump's political pressure campaign. When the 
President tried to misuse the Department and install a loyalist 
at its helm, these brave officials refused and threatened to 
resign. They were willing to sacrifice their careers for the 
good of our country.
    The Department of Justice is unique in the executive 
branch. The President oversees the Department of Justice, yet 
the President's personal or partisan interests must not shape 
or dictate the Department's actions.
    The President cannot and must not use the Department to 
serve his own personal interest, and he must not use its people 
to do his political bidding, especially when what he wants them 
to do is to subvert democracy.
    The President cannot pervert justice, nor the law, to 
maintain his power. Justice must, both in fact and law, be 
blind. That is critical to our whole system of self-governance.
    During this hearing, you will hear time and time again 
about the President's request to investigate claims of 
widespread fraud. Our witnesses--Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue, and 
Mr. Engel--stood firm in the face of overbearing political 
pressure because they understood that their oath was to the 
Constitution and not to the personal or political interests of 
the President.
    The President and his allies became keenly aware that, with 
legal challenges exhausted and electoral votes certified, their 
only hope would be a last-ditch scheme to prevent Congress from 
certifying the win, thus throwing the entire system into 
constitutional chaos.
    The President wanted the Department to sow doubt in the 
legitimacy of the election to empower his followers and Members 
of Congress to take action. If the Department could just lend 
its credibility to the conspiracies, people would have the 
justification they needed to spread the big lie.
    So President Trump ultimately wanted the Department of 
Justice to say the election was ``corrupt'' and ``leave the 
rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.''
    As you will hear today, the Department's top leadership 
refused.
    Not surprisingly, President Trump didn't take ``no'' for an 
answer. He didn't accept it from Attorney General Barr, and he 
wouldn't accept it from Mr. Rosen either. So he looked for 
another Attorney General--his third in 2 weeks. He needed to 
find someone who was willing to ignore the facts. That is not 
the norm.
    Let's look at what Attorneys General, Democrats and 
Republicans alike, have said about upholding their oath to the 
Constitution.

    Attorney General Sessions. The Attorney General ultimately owes his 
loyalty to the integrity of the American people and to the fidelity to 
the Constitution and the legitimate laws of the country. That's what 
he's ultimately required to do.
    Attorney General Holder. I will be an independent Attorney General. 
I will be the people's lawyer. If, however, there were an issue that I 
thought were that significant that would compromise my ability to serve 
as Attorney General in the way that I have described it as ``the 
people's lawyer,'' I would not hesitate to resign.
    Attorney General Mukasey. As you and I discussed, if the President 
proposed to undertake a course of conduct that was in violation of the 
Constitution, that would present me with a--a difficult, but not a 
complex, problem. I would have two choices. I could either try to talk 
him out of it or leave. Those are the choices.
    Attorney General Lynch. The Attorney General's position as a 
Cabinet member is perhaps unique from all of the Cabinet members. Yes, 
a member of the President's Cabinet, but the Attorney General has a 
unique responsibility to provide independent and objective advice to 
the President or any agency when it is sought and sometimes, perhaps, 
even when it is not sought.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Everyone in that video, from Eric Holder to 
Jeff Sessions, spoke as one about the independence of the 
Department. It is a point of pride at Justice to apply the law 
without the President's political self-interest tainting its 
actions or dictating how it uses its authorities.
    But President Trump did find one candidate at Justice who 
seemed willing to do anything to help him stay in power. Let's 
hear what President Trump's own lawyer, Eric Herschmann, had to 
say about Jeff Clark's plan to overturn the election.
    I would like to advise viewers, this video contains some 
strong language.

    Mr. Herschmann. And when he finished discussing what he planned on 
doing, I said good, fucking--excuse me, sorry--F'ing A-hole, 
congratulations. You just admitted your first step or act you take as 
Attorney General would be committing a felony and violating rule 6(e). 
You're clearly the right candidate for this job.

    Mr. Kinzinger. So who is Jeff Clark? An environmental 
lawyer, with no experience relevant to leading the entire 
Department of Justice.
    What was his only qualification? That he would do whatever 
the President wanted him to do, including overthrowing a free 
and a fair democratic election.
    President Trump's campaign to bend the Justice Department 
to his political will culminated in a showdown on January 3rd. 
Today, we will take you inside that early evening Oval Office 
meeting, where top Justice Department officials met with the 
President. At stake: The leadership and integrity of the 
Department of Justice.

    Mr. Donoghue. The meeting took about another 2\1/2\ hours from the 
time I entered. It was entirely focused on whether there should be a 
DOJ leadership change. I was sitting directly in front of the 
President. Jeff Rosen was to my right. Jeff Clark was to my left.
    Acting Attorney General Rosen. He looked at me, and I underscored, 
``Well, the one thing we know is you're not going to do anything. You 
don't even agree that the concerns that are being presented are--are 
valid. And here's someone who has--has a different view. So why 
shouldn't I do that?'' You know, that's how the discussion then 
proceeded.
    Mr. Herschmann. Jeff Clark was proposing that--uh--Jeff Rosen be 
replaced by Jeff Clark, and I thought the proposal was asinine.
    Mr. Heaphy. What were Clark's purported bases for why it was in the 
President's interest for him to step in? What would he do? What would--
how would things change according to Mr. Clark in the meeting?
    Mr. Donoghue. He repeatedly said to the President that, if he was 
put in the seat, he would conduct real investigations that would, in 
his view, uncover widespread fraud. He would send out the letter that 
he had drafted and that this was a last opportunity to sort-of set 
things straight with this defective election and that he could do it 
and he had the intelligence and the will and the desire to pursue these 
matters in the way that the President thought most appropriate.
    Mr. Herschmann. And he was making a pitch, and every time he'd get 
clobbered over the head. He would, like, say, like, you know, he would 
call to order, you know, the President--``your decision. You get the 
chance to make this decision, and, you know, you've heard everybody, 
and you can make your determination.'' And then we jump back in, and, 
you know, they would clobber him.
    Mr. Donoghue. I made the point that Jeff Clark is not even 
competent to serve as the Attorney General. He's never been a criminal 
attorney. He's never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. 
He's never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial jury. And 
he kind of retorted by saying, ``Well, I've done a lot of very 
complicated appeals in civil litigation, environmental litigation, and 
things like that.'' 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.'' And Pat Cipollone weighed in at one point. I 
remember saying, ``You know, that letter that this guy wants to send, 
that letter is a murder-suicide pact. It's going to damage everyone who 
touches it, and we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don't 
ever want to see that letter again.'' And so we went along those lines.
    Mr. Herschmann. I thought Jeff's proposal--Clark's proposal was 
nuts. I mean, this guy--at a certain point, ``Listen, the best I can 
tell is the only thing you know about environmental and elections 
challenges is they both start with E, and based on your answers 
tonight, I'm not even certain you know that.''
    Mr. Donoghue. The President said, ``Suppose I do this. Suppose I 
replace him, Jeff Rosen, with him, Jeff Clark. What do you do?''

    Mr. Kinzinger. Well, we know these men before us did the 
right thing.
    But think about what happens if these Justice officials 
make a different decision. What happens if they bow to the 
pressure? What would that do to us as a democracy? As a Nation?
    Imagine a future where the President could screen 
applicants to the Justice Department with one question: Are you 
loyal to me or to the Constitution? It wouldn't take long to 
find people willing to pledge their loyalty to the man.
    We know many of President Trump's vocal supporters on 
January 6th also wanted the Justice Department to do whatever 
he asked as long as it meant he could stay in power. They made 
sure Justice Department officials heard his message as they 
protested loudly in front of the Department on their way to the 
Capitol on January 6th.

    Crowd. Do your job! Do your job! Do your job! Do your job! Do your 
job!
    Voice. Live in DC, we're marching to the Capitol. We are at the 
Department of Justice right now telling these cowards to do their job!
    Voice. We're going to take the Capitol.

    Mr. Kinzinger. I want to take a moment now to speak 
directly to my fellow Republicans.
    Imagine the country's top prosecutor--with the power to 
open investigations, subpoena, charge crimes, and seek 
imprisonment--imagine that official pursuing the agenda of the 
other party instead of that of the American people as a whole.
    If you are a Democrat, imagine it the other way around.
    Today, President Trump's total disregard for the 
Constitution and his oath will be fully exposed.
    Now let's get this hearing under way so we can do our part 
to protect the freedoms that we often take for granted, so that 
we can see how close we came to losing it all.
    I now yield back to the Chairman.
    Chairman Thompson. We are joined today by three 
distinguished witnesses who each served in the Trump 
administration in the months preceding January 6th.
    Mr. Jeffrey Rosen served at the Department of Justice from 
May 2019 until January 2021. With President Trump's nomination 
and the confirmation of the U.S. Senate, he became the United 
States Deputy Attorney General. In December 2020, he took the 
mantle of Acting Attorney General.
    Mr. Richard Donoghue has served in the Department of 
Justice for over 14 years. Mr. Donoghue was a United States 
attorney for the Eastern District of New York; then became Mr. 
Rosen's Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General; and, 
finally, Acting Deputy Attorney General. Mr. Donoghue also 
served more than 20 years in the United States military, 
including the 82nd Airborne and the Judge Advocate General's 
Corps.
    We are also joined by Mr. Steven Engel, the former 
Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. He 
was nominated by the former President and confirmed by the 
Senate during the Trump administration. He served from November 
2017 to January 2021 and has now returned to private practice.
    I will now swear in our witnesses. The witnesses will 
please stand and raise their right hands.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you. You may be seated.
    Let the record reflect the witnesses all answered in the 
affirmative.
    I now recognize myself for questions.
    First of all, gentlemen, thank you for being here today.
    All of you served at former President Trump's pleasure at 
the Department of Justice in top leadership positions with 
tremendous responsibilities.
    Former Attorney General Bill Barr told the Select Committee 
that, before he left the Department in December 2020, he told 
President Trump, on at least three occasions, there was no 
evidence of widespread election fraud that would have changed 
the results of the Presidential election and refuted numerous 
specific claims of election fraud the President was making.
    Mr. Rosen, after Mr. Barr announced his resignation, did 
Donald Trump continue to demand that the Department of Justice 
investigate his claims of election fraud?
    Mr. Rosen.\1\ Yes. He asserted that he thought the Justice 
Department had not done enough.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Rosen has been included in the 
Appendix and may be found on page 43.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    From the time you took over from Attorney General Barr 
until January 3rd, how often did President Trump contact you or 
the Department to push allegations of election fraud?
    Mr. Rosen. So, between December 23rd and January 3rd, the 
President either called me or met with me virtually every day, 
with one or two exceptions, like Christmas Day.
    Before that--because it had been announced that I would 
become the Acting Attorney General before the date I actually 
did--the President had asked that Rich Donoghue and I go over 
and meet with him, I believe on December 15th, as well.
    Chairman Thompson. So, after you had some of these meetings 
and conversations with the President, what things did the 
President raise with you?
    Mr. Rosen. So the common element of all of this was the 
President expressing his dissatisfaction that the Justice 
Department, in his view, had not done enough to investigate 
election fraud.
    But, at different junctures, other topics came up at 
different intervals. So, at one point, he had raised the 
question of having a special counsel for election fraud. At a 
number of points, he raised requests that I meet with his 
campaign counsel, Mr. Giuliani.
    At one point, he raised whether the Justice Department 
would file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court. At a couple of 
junctures, there were questions about making public statements 
or about holding a press conference.
    At one of the later junctures was this issue of sending a 
letter to State legislatures in Georgia or other States.
    So there were different things raised at different parts 
of--or different intervals, with the common theme being his 
dissatisfaction about what the Justice Department had done to 
investigate election fraud.
    I will say that the Justice Department declined all of 
those requests that I was just referencing because we did not 
think that they were appropriate, based on the facts and the 
law as we understood them.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    So, Mr. Donoghue, on December 15th, the day after Attorney 
General Barr announced his resignation, the President summoned 
you and Mr. Rosen to the White House.
    At this meeting with the President, what did he want to 
discuss?
    Mr. Donoghue. There were a number of topics of discussion 
that day, Mr. Chairman.
    Much of the conversation focused on a report that had been 
recently released relating to Antrim County in Michigan. I 
believe on December 13th an organization called the Allied 
Security Group issued a report that alleged that the Dominion 
voting machines in that county had a 68 percent error rate.
    The report was widely covered in the media. We were aware 
of it. We obtained a copy of it on the 14th of December, the 
day prior. We circulated it to the U.S. attorneys in Michigan 
for their awareness. We had a number of discussions internally.
    But the conversation with the President on that day, the 
15th, was largely focused on that, and he was essentially 
saying, ``Have you seen this report?'' He was adamant that the 
report must be accurate, that it proved that the election was 
defective, that he, in fact, won the election, and the 
Department should be using that report to basically tell the 
American people that the results were not trustworthy.
    He went on to other theories as well, but the bulk of that 
conversation on December 15th focused on Antrim County, 
Michigan, and the ASOG report.
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Mr. Engel, we know that Attorney General Barr announced on 
December 1, 2020, that the Department of Justice had found no 
evidence of widespread fraud that could have changed the 
outcome of the election.
    So, from December 1, 2020, until today, as you sit here, 
have you ever doubted that top-line conclusion?
    Mr. Engel.\2\ No, I have never had any reason to doubt 
Attorney General Barr's conclusion.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ The prepared statement of Mr. Engel has been included in the 
Appendix and may be found on page 60.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Thompson. Thank you.
    Pursuant to section 5(c)(8) of House Resolution 503, the 
Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 
Kinzinger, for questions.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    In the weeks leading to January 6th, the Department of 
Justice was fielding almost daily requests from the President 
to investigate claims of election fraud. Each claim was refuted 
time and time again--an effort Attorney General Barr described 
as ``Whack-A-Mole.''
    When each of the President's efforts failed, he resorted to 
installing a new Attorney General to say the election was 
illegal and corrupt simply so he could stay in power.
    President Trump started leaning on the Justice Department 
the first chance he got, on November 29th, his first television 
interview after the election.

    Ms. Bartiromo. Where is the DOJ and the FBI in all of this, Mr. 
President? You have laid out some serious charges here. Shouldn't this 
be something that the FBI is investigating?
    President Trump. Missing in action.
    Ms. Bartiromo. Are they? Is the DOJ investigating?
    President Trump. Missing in action. Can't tell you where they are.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Republican Congressmen echoed the President 
just 2 days later. They wrote a letter to Attorney General 
Barr, laying into the Justice Department for a ``shocking lack 
of action'' in investigating the claims of election fraud.
    That same day, Attorney General Barr stated publicly that 
President Trump's claims had no merit.
    Ignoring the top law enforcement officer in the country, 
Republican Congressmen amplified the ``stolen election'' 
message to the American public. Let's listen.

    Mr. Gohmert. And so there's widespread evidence of fraud 'cause 
people haven't done their jobs. Durham and Barr will deserve a big 
notation in history when it's written of the rise and fall of the 
United States if they don't clean up this mess, clean up the fraud, do 
your jobs, and save this little experiment in self-government.
    Mr. Biggs. Again, I join my colleagues in calling on Attorney 
General Ball--Barr to immediately let us know what he's doing.
    Mr. Gosar. We're already working on challenging the certified 
electors. And then what about the courts? How pathetic are the courts? 
[Crowd Boos]
    Mr. Gaetz. January 6th, I'm joining with the fighters in the 
Congress, and we are going to object to electors from States that 
didn't run clean elections. [Applause] Democracy is left undefended if 
we accept the results of a stolen election without fighting with every 
bit of vigor we can muster.
    Mr. Jordan. The ultimate date of significance is January 6. This is 
how the process works. The ultimate arbiter here, the ultimate check 
and balance, is the U.S. Congress. And when something is done in an 
unconstitutional fashion, which happened in several of these States, we 
have a duty to step forward and have this debate and have this vote on 
the 6th of January.
    Mr. Brooks. Today is the day American patriots start taking down 
names and kicking ass.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, on December 27th, you had a 
90-minute conversation with the President where he raised false 
claim after false claim with you and Mr. Rosen.
    How did you respond to what you called a ``stream of 
allegations''?
    Mr. Donoghue. The December 27th conversation was, in my 
mind, an escalation of the earlier conversations. As the former 
Acting AG indicated, there were a lot of communications that 
preceded that. As we got later in the month of December, the 
President's entreaties became more urgent; he became more 
adamant that we weren't doing our job, we needed to step up and 
do our job.
    He had this arsenal of allegations that he wanted to rely 
on. So I felt in that conversation that it was incumbent upon 
me to make it very clear to the President what our 
investigations had revealed and that we had concluded, based on 
actual investigations, actual witness interviews, actual 
reviews of documents, that these allegations simply had no 
merit.
    I wanted to try to cut through the noise, because it was 
clear to us that there were a lot of people whispering in his 
ear, feeding him these conspiracy theories and allegations. I 
felt that being very blunt in that conversation might help make 
it clear to the President these allegations were simply not 
true.
    So, as he went through them--in what for me was a 90-minute 
conversation or so and what for the former Acting AG was a 2-
hour conversation as the President went through them, I went 
piece by piece to say, ``No, that's false, that is not true,'' 
and to correct him really in a serial fashion as he moved from 
one theory to another.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Can you give me an example of one or two of 
those theories?
    Mr. Donoghue. So one that was very clear at that point was 
the Antrim County, the ASOG report that I mentioned earlier. 
Allied Security Operations Group released this report that said 
68 percent error rate.
    There was, in fact, in Antrim County a hand recount. It had 
nothing to do with the Department. The Department did not 
request that. That was pursuant to litigation brought by other 
parties. But there was a hand recount. So they were able to 
compare the hand recount to what the machines had reported.
    For the ballots that were actually counted by machine, more 
than 15,000, there was 1 error, 1 ballot. I did a quick 
calculation and came up with .0063 percent error rate, which is 
well within tolerance.
    So I made it very clear to the President, because he was so 
fixated on the ASOG report in the December 15th conversation, 
that, in fact, our investigation revealed that the error rate 
was .0063 percent. ``So that, Mr. President, is an example of 
what people are telling you that is not true and that you 
cannot and should not be relying on.''
    So that was one very explicit one, and I think you see that 
reflected in my notes.
    We went through a series of others. The truck driver who 
claimed to have moved an entire tractor trailer of ballots from 
New York to Pennsylvania, that was also incorrect. We did an 
investigation with the FBI, interviewed witnesses at the front 
end and the back end of that trailer's transit from New York to 
Pennsylvania. We looked at loading manifests. We interviewed 
witnesses, including, of course, the driver. We knew it wasn't 
true. Whether the driver believed it or not was never clear to 
me, but it was just not true. So that was another one that I 
tried to educate the President on.
    There were a series of others, mostly in swing States. Of 
course, he wanted to talk a great deal about Georgia, the State 
Farm Arena video, which he believed for various reasons was, as 
he said it, ``fraud staring you right in the face.''
    Mr. Kinzinger. Were any of the allegations he brought up 
found credible? Did you find any of them credible?
    Mr. Donoghue. No.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So, during this conversation, did you take 
handwritten notes directly quoting the President?
    Mr. Donoghue. I did.
    To make it clear, Attorney General Rosen called me on my 
Government cell phone, said he had been on the phone with the 
President for some time, the President had a lot of these 
allegations. I was better versed in what the Department had 
done, just because I had closer contact with the 
investigations, and the AG asked me to get on the call. Of 
course, I agreed.
    I begin taking notes only because, at the outset, the 
President made an allegation I had not heard. I had heard many 
of these things; I knew many of them were investigated. But 
when the President, at least when I came to the conversation, 
when he began speaking, he brought up an allegation I was 
completely unaware of. Of course, that concerned us. So I 
simply reached out and grabbed a notepad off my wife's 
nightstand and a pen, and I started jotting it down.
    That had to do with an allegation that more than 200,000 
votes were certified in the State of Pennsylvania that were not 
actually cast. Sometimes the President would say it was 205; 
sometimes he would say it was 250. But I had not heard this 
before, and I wanted to get the allegation down clearly so that 
we could look into it, if appropriate.
    That is why I started taking those notes. Then, as the 
conversation continued, I just continued to take the notes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let's take a look at the notes, if we could, 
right now.
    As we can see on the screen, you actually quote President 
Trump asking, ``Where's DOJ?'', just like we heard him say in 
his first television interview.
    How did you respond to that?
    Mr. Donoghue. So both the Acting AG and I tried to explain 
to the President, on this occasion and on several other 
occasions, that the Justice Department has a very important, 
very specific, but very limited role in these elections. States 
run their elections. We are not quality control for the States.
    We are obviously interested in and have a mission that 
relates to criminal conduct in relation to Federal elections. 
We also have related civil rights responsibilities. So we do 
have an important role, but the bottom line was, if a State ran 
their election in such a way that it was defective, that is to 
the State or Congress to correct. It is not for the Justice 
Department to step in.
    I certainly understood the President, as a layman, not 
understanding why the Justice Department didn't have at least a 
civil role to step in and bring suit on behalf of the American 
people. We tried to explain that to him.
    The American people do not constitute the client for the 
United States Justice Department. The one and only client of 
the United States Justice Department is the U.S. Government.
    The U.S. Government does not have standing, as we were 
repeatedly told by our internal teams--OLC, led by Steve Engel, 
as well as the Office of the Solicitor General researched it 
and gave us thorough, clear opinions that we simply did not 
have standing. We tried to explain that to the President on 
numerous occasions.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let's take a look at another one of your 
notes. You also noted that Mr. Rosen said to Mr. Trump, ``DOJ 
can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the 
election.''
    How did the President respond to that, sir?
    Mr. Donoghue. He responded very quickly and said, 
essentially, ``That's not what I'm asking you to do. What I'm 
just asking you to do is just say it was corrupt, and leave the 
rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.''
    Mr. Kinzinger. So let's now put up the notes where you 
quote the President, as you were speaking to that.
    You said the President said, ``Just say the election was 
corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the Republican 
Congressmen.''
    So, Mr. Donoghue, that is a direct quote from President 
Trump, correct?
    Mr. Donoghue. That is an exact quote from the President, 
yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. The next note shows that the President kept 
pressing.
    Even though he had been told that there was no evidence of 
fraud, did the President keep saying that the Department was 
``obligated to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt 
election''?
    Mr. Donoghue. That is also an exact quote from the 
President, yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let me just be clear. Did the Department 
find any evidence to conclude that there was anything illegal 
or corrupt about the 2020 election?
    Mr. Donoghue. There were isolated instances of fraud. None 
of them came close to calling into question the outcome of the 
election in any individual State.
    Mr. Kinzinger. How would you describe the President's 
demeanor during that call?
    Mr. Donoghue. He was more agitated than he was on December 
15th. The President, throughout all of these meetings and 
telephone conversations, was adamant that he had won and that 
we were not doing our job. But it did escalate over time until 
ultimately the meeting on January 3rd, which was sort-of the 
most extreme of the meetings and conversations.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So I want to make sure we don't gloss this 
over: ``Just say it was corrupt, and leave the rest to us.''
    The President wanted the top Justice Department officials 
to declare that the election was corrupt, even though, as he 
knew, there was absolutely no evidence to support that 
statement.
    The President didn't care about actually investigating the 
facts. He just wanted the Department of Justice to put its 
stamp of approval on the lies.
    Who was going to help him? Well, Jeff Clark.
    Mr. Rosen, on Christmas Eve, your first official day as the 
Acting Attorney General, President Trump called you. What did 
he want to talk about?
    Mr. Rosen. The same things he was talking about publicly. 
He wanted to talk about that he thought the election had been 
stolen or was corrupt and that there was widespread fraud. I 
had told him that our reviews had not shown that to be the 
case.
    So we had an extended discussion, probably 15, maybe 20 
minutes, something like that, with him urging that the 
Department of Justice should be doing more with regard to 
election fraud.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did he mention Jeff Clark's name?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes. It was just in passing. He made what I 
regarded as a peculiar reference. I don't remember the exact 
quote, but it was something about, did I know Jeff Clark, or 
did I know who he was, or something like that. I told him I 
did, and then the conversation just moved on.
    But when I hung up, I was quizzical as to, how does the 
President even know Mr. Clark? I was not aware that they had 
ever met or that the President had been involved with any of 
the issues in the Civil Division.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So it was a bit of a surprise when he 
brought his name up?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So Mr. Clark was the acting head of the 
Civil Division and head of Environmental and Natural Resources 
Division at the Department of Justice.
    Do either of those divisions have any role whatsoever in 
investigating election fraud, sir?
    Mr. Rosen. No. And, to my awareness, Jeff Clark had had no 
prior involvement of any kind with regard to the work that the 
Department was doing that Attorney General Barr has talked 
about to this Committee.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So let's take a minute and explain why the 
President mentioned Jeff Clark's name to Mr. Rosen here on 
Christmas Eve.
    On December 21st, some Republican Members of Congress met 
with President Trump in the White House to talk about 
overturning the 2020 election.
    Let's hear Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene talk about 
how this meeting got set up.

    Mrs. Greene of Georgia. I was the only new Member at the meeting. I 
called President Trump on Saturday and--and said, ``We've got to have a 
meeting. There's many of us that feel like this election has been 
stolen.''

    Mr. Kinzinger. So, on the screen, you will see that 
President Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, tweeted about 
that meeting right after it happened.
    He said, ``Several Members of Congress just finished a 
meeting in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump, 
preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter 
fraud. Stay tuned.''
    On the same day he met with these Republican Members of 
Congress, President Trump called into a conservative political 
convention, and he used the opportunity to pressure the 
Department of Justice to investigate his bogus claims.

    President Trump. The problem is we need a party that's going to 
fight, and we have some great Congressmen and--women that are doing it. 
And we have others, some great fighters. But we won this in a 
landslide. They know it, and we need backing from, like, the Justice 
Department. And other people have to finally step up.

    Mr. Kinzinger. The Select Committee obtained records from 
the National Archives that show that Scott Perry was one of the 
Congressmen who joined that meeting.
    We learned from White House records--that you will now see 
on the screen--that, the very next day, Representative Perry 
returned to the White House. This time, he brought a Justice 
Department official named Jeffrey Clark.
    Representative Perry provided the following statement to 
his local TV affiliate. He said, ``Throughout the past 4 years, 
I've worked with Assistant Attorney General Clark on various 
legislative matters. When President Trump asked if I would make 
an introduction, I obliged.''
    But why Jeff Clark? Let's hear Mr. Giuliani explain the 
kind of person that he and the President wanted at the top of 
Justice.

    Mr. George. Do you remember ever recommending to anybody that Mr. 
Clark, meaning Jeffrey Clark, at DOJ be given election-related 
responsibilities?
    Mr. Giuliani. You mean beyond the President?
    Mr. George. Correct.
    Mr. Giuliani. Well, beyond the President, I do recall saying to 
people that somebody should be put in charge of the Justice Department 
who isn't frightened of what's going to be done to their reputation 
because the Justice Department was filled with people like that.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Should put somebody that is not frightened 
of what is going to be done to their reputation.
    Mr. Donoghue, when you told the President that you wouldn't 
pursue baseless claims of fraud, was it because you were 
worried about your reputation?
    Mr. Donoghue. No. Not at all.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Clark's name was also mentioned in White 
House in late December and early January, as described by a top 
aide to Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson.

    Mr. George. Was it your understanding that Representative Perry was 
pushing for a specific person to take over the Department?
    Ms. Hutchinson. He wanted Mr. Clark--Mr. Jeff Clark to take over 
the Department of Justice.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Rosen, after your call with President 
Trump on December 24th, you spoke with Mr. Clark on December 
26th about his contact with the President.
    Can you tell us about that conversation?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes.
    Because I had been quizzical about why his name had come 
up, I called him, and I tried to explore if he would share if 
there was something I ought to know. After some back-and-forth, 
he acknowledged that shortly before Christmas he had gone to a 
meeting in the Oval Office with the President.
    That, of course, surprised me. I asked him, how did that 
happen? He was defensive. He said it had been unplanned, that 
he had been talking to someone he referred to as ``General 
Perry'' but I believe is Congressman Perry, and that, 
unbeknownst to him, he was asked to go to a meeting, and he 
didn't know it but it turned out it was at the Oval--he found 
himself at the Oval Office. He was apologetic for that.
    I said, well, you didn't tell me about it, it wasn't 
authorized, and you didn't even tell me after the fact. You 
know, this is not appropriate.
    But he was contrite and said it had been inadvertent and it 
would not happen again and that if anyone asked him to go to 
such a meeting he would notify Rich Donoghue and me.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Is there a policy that governs who can have 
contact directly with the White House?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes. So, across many administrations, for a long 
period of time, there is a policy that, particularly with 
regard to criminal investigations, restricts at both the White 
House end and the Justice Department end those more sensitive 
issues to the highest ranks.
    So, for criminal matters, the policy for a long time has 
been that only the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney 
General, from the DOJ side, can have conversations about 
criminal matters with the White House, or the Attorney General 
and the Deputy Attorney General can authorize someone for a 
specific item with their permission.
    But the idea is to make sure that the top rung of the 
Justice Department knows about it and is in the thing to 
control it and make sure only appropriate things are done.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Engel, from your perspective, why is it 
important to have a policy like Mr. Rosen just discussed?
    Mr. Engel. Well, it is critical that the Department of 
Justice conducts its criminal investigations free from either 
the reality or any appearance of political interference.
    So people can get in trouble if people at the White House 
are speaking with people at the Department. That is why--the 
purpose of these policies is to keep these communications as 
infrequent and at the highest levels as possible, just to make 
sure that people who are less careful about it, who don't 
really understand these implications, such as Mr. Clark, don't 
run afoul of those contact policies.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you.
    So the Select Committee conducted an informal interview 
with the White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, and his deputy, 
Pat Philbin, about their contact with Mr. Clark, though neither 
has yet agreed to sit for transcribed and videotaped 
interviews.
    But Pat Cipollone told the Select Committee that he 
intervened when he heard Mr. Clark was meeting with the 
President about legal matters without his knowledge, which was 
strictly against White House policy.
    Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Philbin, like Mr. Rosen, told Mr. 
Clark to stand down, and he didn't.
    On the same day Acting Attorney General Rosen told Mr. 
Clark to stop talking to the White House, Representative Perry 
was urging Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to elevate Clark within 
the Department of Justice.
    You can now see on the screen behind me a series of texts 
between Representative Perry and Mr. Meadows. They show that 
Representative Perry requested that Mr. Clark be elevated 
within the Department.
    Representative Perry tells Mr. Meadows on December 26th 
that, ``Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down. 
Eleven days to January 6th and 25 days to inauguration. We've 
got to get going.''
    Representative Perry followed up and says, ``Mark, you 
should call Jeff. I just got off the phone with him, and he 
explained to me why the principal deputy won't work, especially 
with the FBI. They will view it as not having the authority to 
enforce what needs to be done.''
    Mr. Meadows responds with, ``I got it. I think I 
understand. Let me work on the deputy position.''
    Representative Perry then texts, ``Roger. Just sent you 
something on Signal. Just sent you an updated file. Did you 
call Jeff Clark?''
    Mr. Donoghue, Representative Perry called you the next day, 
on December 27th. Who told him to call you?
    Mr. Donoghue. My understanding is the President did. At the 
outset of the call, Congressman Perry told me that he was 
calling at the behest of the President.
    Mr. Kinzinger. What did he want to talk about?
    Mr. Donoghue. He wanted to talk about Pennsylvania in 
particular. He gave me some background about, you know, why he 
in particular doesn't trust the FBI and why the American people 
don't necessarily trust the FBI.
    Then he went into some allegations specific to 
Pennsylvania, which included, amongst others, this allegation 
that the secretary of state had certified more votes than were 
actually cast.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did you direct the local U.S. attorney's 
office to investigate that claim?
    Mr. Donoghue. So Mr. Perry said that he had a great deal of 
information, that investigations had been done, that there was 
some sort of forensic-type report that would be helpful to me.
    I didn't know Congressman Perry. I had never heard of him 
before this conversation. But I said, ``Sir, if you've got 
something that you think is relevant to what the Justice 
Department's mission is, you should feel free to send it to 
me.'' He did.
    I was en route from New York to Washington. I got it. I 
looked at it on my iPhone. Obviously, I couldn't read the whole 
thing in transit like that, but I looked at it to get a feel 
for what it was. Then I forwarded it to the United States 
attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did they get back to you? What did they 
conclude?
    Mr. Donoghue. Scott Brady looked at it. He was the Western 
District of Pennsylvania U.S. attorney. Took him a couple days, 
but he got back in relatively short order with a pretty clear 
explanation for why there was no foundation for concern.
    The secretary of state had not certified more votes than 
were actually cast. The difference between the 5.25 that was 
actually certified by the secretary of state and the 5 million 
that was on a public-facing website was that the information on 
the website was incomplete because 4 counties had not uploaded 
their data.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So no credibility to that claim?
    Mr. Donoghue. There was zero to that, right.
    Mr. Kinzinger. During that call, did Scott Perry mention 
Mr. Clark? What did he say about him, if so?
    Mr. Donoghue. He did; he mentioned Mr. Clark. He said 
something to the effect of, ``I think Jeff Clark is great, and 
I think he is the kind of guy who could get in there and do 
something about this stuff.''
    This was coming on the heels of the President having 
mentioned Mr. Clark in the afternoon call earlier that day.
    Mr. Kinzinger. I would like to yield to the gentlewoman 
from Wyoming, Vice Chair Cheney.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Kinzinger. I 
thank the gentleman for yielding.
    As we discussed earlier, at the center of Mr. Clark's plan 
to undo President Trump's election loss was a letter.
    Mr. Donoghue, on December 28th, Mr. Clark emailed you and 
Mr. Rosen a draft letter that he wanted you to sign and send to 
Georgia State officials. You testified that this could have 
``grave constitutional consequences.''
    Mr. Donoghue, can you tell us what you meant by that?
    Mr. Donoghue. Well, I had to read both the email and the 
attached letter twice to make sure I really understood what he 
was proposing because it was so extreme to me I had a hard time 
getting my head around it initially.
    But I read it, and I did understand it for what he 
intended, and I had to sit down and sort-of compose what I 
thought was an appropriate response.
    I actually initially went next door to the Acting AG's 
office, but he was not there. We were both on that email. I 
knew we would both have probably a very similar reaction to it.
    He was not in his office, so I returned to my office, and I 
sat down to draft a response because I thought it was very 
important to give a prompt response rejecting this out of hand.
    In my response I explained a number of reasons this is not 
the Department's role to suggest or dictate to State 
legislatures how they should select their electors. But more 
importantly, this was not based on fact. This was actually 
contrary to the facts as developed by Department investigations 
over the last several weeks and months.
    So I responded to that. For the Department to insert itself 
into the political process this way I think would have had 
grave consequences for the country. It may very well have 
spiraled us into a constitutional crisis. I wanted to make sure 
that he understood the gravity of the situation because he 
didn't seem to really appreciate it.
    Vice Chair Cheney. What was Mr. Clark's reaction when you 
sent this email to him?
    Mr. Donoghue. He didn't respond directly to the email, but 
we met shortly after that. After I sent the email, the Acting 
AG returned. I went to his office. He had just read it. He had 
a very similar reaction to me. He was exasperated. He told me 
that he had told one of his administrative assistants to get 
Jeff Clark up here, we want to him talk face to face about 
this.
    So the three of us then had a meeting probably around 1800 
that night in the Deputy Attorney General's conference room.
    Vice Chair Cheney. One of the things that you said to Mr. 
Clark is, ``What you are doing is nothing less than the United 
States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a 
Presidential election.''
    I assume you conveyed that to him as well in your meeting 
that evening?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes, in those very words. It was a very 
contentious meeting. But, yes, that was said, amongst other 
things.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Despite this contentious meeting and 
your strong reaction to the letter, did Mr. Clark continue to 
push his concept in the coming days?
    Mr. Donoghue. He did, yes. We had subsequent meetings and 
conversations. The Acting AG probably had more contact with him 
than I did.
    But between the 28th and the 2nd, when we had another in-
person meeting, he clearly continued to move down this path. He 
began calling witnesses and apparently conducting 
investigations of his own.
    He got a briefing from DNI about purported foreign 
intelligence interference. We thought perhaps once it was 
explained to him that there was no basis for that part of his 
concern, that he would retreat.
    But instead, he doubled down and said, ``Well, okay, so 
there is no foreign interference. I still think there are 
enough allegations out there that we should go ahead and send 
this letter,'' which shocked me even more than the initial one 
because you would think after a couple days of looking at this, 
he, like we, would have come to the same conclusion that it was 
completely unfounded.
    Vice Chair Cheney. When you learned that he had been 
calling witnesses and conducting investigations on his own, did 
you confront him?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes.
    Vice Chair Cheney. What was his reaction?
    Mr. Donoghue. He got very defensive. You know, as I said, 
there were a series of conversations through that week. I 
certainly remember very specifically the conversation and the 
meeting on January 2nd. That got even more confrontational.
    But he was defensive. You know, similar to his earlier 
reaction when I said this is nothing less than Justice 
Department meddling in an election, his reaction was, ``I think 
a lot of people have meddled in this election.''
    So he kind-of clung to that, and then spewed out some of 
these theories, some of which we had heard from the President, 
but others which were floating around the internet and media, 
and just kept insisting that the Department needed to act and 
needed to send those letters.
    Vice Chair Cheney. The Committee has also learned that Mr. 
Clark was working with another attorney at the Department named 
Ken Klukowski, who drafted this letter to Georgia with Mr. 
Clark.
    Mr. Klukowski had arrived at the Department on December 
15th with just 36 days left until the inauguration. He was 
specifically assigned to work under Jeff Clark.
    Mr. Klukowski also worked with John Eastman, who we showed 
you at our hearing last week was one of the primary architects 
of President Trump's scheme to overturn the election.
    The Georgia letter that we have been discussing 
specifically talks about some of Dr. Eastman's theories, 
including, ``The purpose of the special session the Department 
recommends would be for the General Assembly to determine 
whether the election failed to make a proper and valid choice 
between the candidates, such that a General Assembly could take 
whatever action is necessary to ensure that one of the slates 
of electors cast on December 14th will be accepted by Congress 
on January 6th.''
    The Committee has also learned that the relationship 
between Dr. Eastman and Mr. Klukowski persisted after Mr. 
Klukowski joined the Justice Department.
    Let's take a look at an email recommending that Mr. 
Klukowski and Dr. Eastman brief Vice President Pence and his 
staff. Other recipients of this email included the chief of 
staff to Congressman Louie Gohmert.
    The email says, ``As stated last week, I believe the Vice 
President and his staff would benefit greatly from a briefing 
by John and Ken. As I also mentioned, we want to make sure we 
don't overexpose Ken given his new position.''
    This email suggests that Mr. Klukowski was simultaneously 
working with Jeffrey Clark to draft the proposed letter to 
Georgia officials to overturn their certified election and 
working with Dr. Eastman to help pressure the Vice President to 
overturn the election.
    I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today 
and for answering our questions about this letter and other 
issues.
    We asked Mr. Clark some of the same questions that we have 
asked you, and here is how he answered.

    Mr. Wood. Did you discuss this draft letter to Georgia officials 
with the President of the United States?
    Mr. Clark. Fifth and executive privilege. Again, just restated for 
the abundance of caution.
    Mr. Wood. Okay. If you look again at the draft letter, in the first 
paragraph, second sentence says, ``The Department will update you as we 
are able on investigatory progress, but at this time, we have 
identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of 
the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.'' 
Isn't that, in fact, contrary to what Attorney General Barr had said on 
December 1, 2020?
    Mr. Clark. Fifth.

    Vice Chair Cheney. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Chairman, I reserve.
    Chairman Thompson. Pursuant to the order of the Committee 
of today, the Chair declares the Committee in recess for a 
period of approximately 10 minutes.
    [Accordingly, at 4:08 p.m., the Committee recessed until 
4:20 p.m., when it was called to order by the Chairman.]
    Chairman Thompson. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Chairman, around the time Mr. Clark was pushing for the 
Department to send the Georgia letter, the President and his 
supporters were pressuring the Justice Department to take other 
actions to change the outcome of the 2020 election.
    Mr. Engel, you were the head of the Office of Legal 
Counsel. Can you first off explain your role? What is that?
    Mr. Engel. Sure. One of the Attorney General's most 
important responsibilities is to provide legal advice to the 
President and to the executive branch.
    As a practical matter, given the responsibilities of the 
Attorney General, the Assistant Attorney General for the Office 
of Legal Counsel exercises that job on a day-to-day basis.
    So, in addition, the head of OLC often functions as a 
general counsel essentially to the Attorney General, and so is 
often the chief legal adviser to the AG as well as the White 
House and the executive branch more broadly.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So given that role, can you kind-of describe 
your relationship with the President?
    Mr. Engel. Well, in connection with my role at OLC, over 
the course of my tenure there there were a number of instances 
in which folks at the White House would seek to bring me in to 
provide legal advice to the President, sometimes discussing the 
legal options that could be pursued among various policy--to 
reach various policy objectives, sometimes to advise the 
President that a course of action that they had been discussing 
was not legally available.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So I want to ask you about two things the 
President asked you and the Department to do. The first is 
reflected in this email that we are going to put on the screen.
    The President sent a draft lawsuit to be filed by the 
Department and the Supreme Court. He wanted you, Mr. Rosen, and 
Mr. Cipollone specifically to review it. You and the Department 
opposed filing it.
    We see on the screen here the talking points that you 
actually drafted on that. So you stated that, ``There is no 
legal basis to bring this lawsuit. Anyone who thinks otherwise 
simply doesn't know the law, much less the Supreme Court.''
    Why was this the Department's position?
    Mr. Engel. Well, I mean, I think the memo sort-of speaks to 
this.
    But essentially this was a draft lawsuit that apparently 
was prepared by people outside the Department. It would be 
styled as brought by the United States and by the Acting 
Solicitor General as an original jurisdiction matter in the 
Supreme Court.
    It was a meritless lawsuit that was not something that the 
Department could or would bring. You know, somebody obviously 
prepared it, handed it to the President, and he forwarded it on 
for our review.
    But that memo explains why the Department of Justice, as 
Mr. Donoghue said earlier, doesn't have any standing to bring 
such a lawsuit. The lawsuit would have been untimely. The 
States had chosen their electors. The electors had been 
certified. They had cast their votes. They had been sent to 
Washington, DC.
    Neither Georgia nor any of the other States on December 
28th, or whenever this was, was in a position to change those 
votes. Essentially, the election had happened. The only thing 
that hadn't happened was the formal counting of the votes.
    So, obviously, the person who drafted this lawsuit didn't 
really understand, in my view, you know, the law and/or how the 
Supreme Court works or the Department of Justice.
    So it was just not something we were going to do. The 
Acting Attorney General asked me to prepare a memo with talking 
points so that he could explain our reasons when he spoke with 
the President about this.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So would you say it was an unusual request?
    Mr. Engel. Certainly. The request that the Department file 
a lawsuit from--drafted by outside lawyers--was certainly an 
unusual request.
    Mr. Kinzinger. There was another issue you were asked to 
look into. In mid-December, did the White House ask Attorney 
General Barr to consider whether a special counsel could be 
appointed to look into election fraud issues?
    Mr. Engel. Yes. I mean, I think the President was probably 
vocal at the time that he believed that a special counsel was 
something that should be considered to look into election 
fraud. There is a specific, you know, request where the 
Attorney General sought my legal advice in the middle of 
December.
    Mr. Kinzinger. What was your conclusion? What conclusion 
did you reach?
    Mr. Engel. So this request was whether the Attorney General 
could appoint as a special counsel a State attorney general to 
conduct an investigation.
    I mean, as a legal matter, under Federal law the Attorney 
General actually has fairly wide discretion to delegate 
prosecutorial authority, including to State prosecutors, which 
happens to assist the Department, you know, and not uncommonly. 
Obviously, a State attorney general exercising prosecutorial 
authority on behalf of the Department of Justice would be 
fairly uncommon.
    When we looked at the issue, what we saw is actually that 
the State law--the State was Louisiana--that the State law 
precluded the Louisiana attorney general from accepting any 
position, any official position on behalf of the U.S. 
Government. So that answered the question, that it was not 
legally available.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So during your time at the Department, was 
there ever any basis to appoint a special counsel to 
investigate President Trump's election fraud claims?
    Mr. Engel. Well, neither Attorney General Barr nor Acting 
Attorney General Rosen did appoint a special counsel. You would 
appoint a special counsel when the Department--when there is a 
basis for the investigation and the Department essentially has 
a conflict of interest.
    It is important to get someone who is independent outside 
of the Department to handle such an investigation. Neither 
Attorney General Barr nor Acting Attorney General Rosen ever 
believed that that was appropriate or necessary in this case.
    Mr. Kinzinger. In fact, Attorney General Barr had already 
told the President that there was no need for the special 
counsel. He actually stated that publicly, and we will see that 
here in a video from December 21st.

    Attorney General Barr. To the extent that there's an investigation, 
I think that it's being handled responsibly and professionally 
currently within the--the Department, and to this point, I have not 
seen a reason to appoint a Special Counsel, and I have no plan to do so 
before I leave.

    Mr. Kinzinger. So remember that December 21st was the same 
day President Trump met with Republican Members at the White 
House to strategize about how to overturn the election while 
his Attorney General is out telling the public, again, that 
there was no widespread evidence of election fraud. Yet, 2 days 
later, we have President Trump tweeting, again publicly 
pressuring the Department to appoint a special counsel.
    He said, ``After seeing the massive voter fraud in the 2020 
Presidential election, I disagree with anyone that thinks a 
strong, fast, and fair special counsel is not needed 
immediately. This was the most corrupt election in the history 
of our country, and it must be closely examined.''
    The Select Committee's investigation revealed that 
President Trump went as far as to promise the job of special 
counsel to now discredited former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney 
Powell at a late-night meeting December 18th.

    Ms. Powell. I know on--on Friday he had asked me to be Special 
Counsel to address the election issues and to collect evidence, and he 
was extremely frustrated with the lack of, I would call it, law 
enforcement by any of the government agencies that are supposed to act 
to protect the rule of law in our republic.

    Mr. Kinzinger. So let's think here. What would a special 
counsel do? With only days to go until election certification, 
it wasn't to investigate anything. An investigation led by a 
special counsel would just create an illusion of legitimacy and 
provide fake cover for those who would want to object, 
including those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. All of 
President Trump's plans for the Justice Department were being 
rebuffed by Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue, Mr. Engel, and others.
    The President became desperate entering into the New Year 
with January 6th fast approaching. President Trump rushed back 
early from Mar-a-Lago on December 31st and called an emergency 
meeting with the Department's leadership.
    Here is Mr. Donoghue describing the last-minute meeting 
held at the White House on New Year's Eve.

    Mr. Donoghue. The President was a little more agitated than he had 
been on the meeting--in the meeting on the 15th. He discussed a variety 
of election matters. He did say, ``This sounds like the kind of thing 
that would warrant appointment of a Special Counsel.'' There was a 
point at which the President said something about, ``Why don't you guys 
seize machines?''

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Rosen, the President asked you to seize 
voting machines from State governments. What was your response 
to that request?
    Mr. Rosen. That we had seen nothing improper with regard to 
the voting machines. I told him that the real experts at that 
had been at DHS, and they had briefed us that they had looked 
at it and that there was nothing wrong with the voting 
machines. So that was not something that was appropriate to do.
    Mr. Kinzinger. There would be no factual basis to seize 
machines?
    Mr. Rosen. I don't think there was legal authority either.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, can you explain what the 
President did after he was told that the Justice Department 
would not seize voting machines?
    Mr. Donoghue. The President was very agitated by the Acting 
Attorney General's response. To the extent that machines and 
the technology was being discussed, the Acting Attorney General 
said that the DHS, Department of Homeland Security, has 
expertise in machines and certifying them and making sure that 
the States were operating them properly.
    Since DHS had been mentioned, the President yelled out to 
his secretary, ``Get Ken Cuccinelli on the phone.'' She did in 
very short order.
    Mr. Cuccinelli was on the phone. He was No. 2 at DHS at the 
time. I was on the speaker phone. The President essentially 
said, ``Ken, I am sitting here with the Acting Attorney 
General. He just told me it is your job to seize machines, and 
you are not doing your job.'' Mr. Cuccinelli responded.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Rosen, did you ever tell the President 
that the Department of Homeland Security could seize voting 
machines?
    Mr. Rosen. No, certainly not.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, during this meeting, did the 
President tell you that he would remove you and Mr. Rosen 
because you weren't declaring there was election fraud?
    Mr. Donoghue. Toward the end of the meeting the President, 
again, was getting very agitated, and he said, ``People tell me 
I should just get rid of both of you, I should just remove you 
and make a change in the leadership, put Jeff Clark in, maybe 
something will finally get done.''
    I responded as I think I had earlier in the December 27th 
call: ``Mr. President, you should have the leadership that you 
want. But understand the United States Justice Department 
functions on facts, evidence, and law, and those are not going 
to change. So you can have whatever leadership you want, but 
the Department's position is not going to change.''
    Mr. Kinzinger. The President's White House Counsel, Pat 
Cipollone, was also present. Do you remember what his position 
was?
    Mr. Donoghue. Pat was very supportive. Pat Cipollone 
throughout these conversations was extremely supportive of the 
Justice Department. He was consistent. I think he had an 
impossible job at that point, but he did it well. He always 
sided with the Justice Department in these discussions.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So let's pause for a second. It is New 
Year's Eve. President Trump is talking about seizing voting 
machines and making the same demands that had already been shot 
down by former Attorney General Barr on at least three 
occasions and by Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue on multiple other 
occasions. Claim after claim knocked down, but the President 
didn't care.
    The next day, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent a flurry of 
emails to you, Mr. Rosen, asking that the Department look into 
a new set of allegations. We are going to put those emails here 
on the screen.
    Here we see three requests made on January 1st. One email 
is a request from Mr. Meadows to you, Mr. Rosen, to send Jeff 
Clark to Fulton County.
    What did you do with this request?
    Mr. Rosen. Well, really nothing. Certainly didn't send Mr. 
Clark to Fulton County. But that email was the first 
corroboration I had seen of--Mr. Clark had told me at that 
point that the President was considering making the change by 
Monday, January 4th.
    So Mr. Meadows' email was something of a corroboration that 
there were discussions going on that I had been--not been 
informed about by Mr. Clark or anybody else.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Interesting.
    The second request that you have is to have the Department 
of Justice lawyers investigate allegations of fraud related to 
New Mexico.
    Mr. Rosen, did you have concern about these emails?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes. Really two concerns about that one. One was 
that it was coming from a campaign or political party, and it 
was really not our role to function as, you know, an arm of any 
campaign for any party or any campaign. That wasn't our role. 
That is part of why I had been unwilling to meet with Mr. 
Giuliani or any of the campaign people before.
    The other part was it was another one of these ones where 
lots of work had already been done and I thought it was a 
rehash of things that had been debunked previously.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So the final email here included a 
completely baseless conspiracy theory that an Italian defense 
contractor uploaded software to a satellite that switched votes 
from Trump to Biden.
    The Select Committee investigation found that this wild, 
baseless conspiracy theory made it from the recesses of the 
internet to the highest echelons of our Government. On December 
31st, Mr. Meadows received this internet conspiracy theory from 
Representative Perry.
    On the screen now is the text that Representative Perry 
sent to Mr. Meadows, copying a YouTube link with the message, 
``Why can't we just work with the Italian government?''
    The next day, the President's chief of staff sent the 
YouTube link to Mr. Rosen, who forwarded it to Mr. Donoghue.
    Mr. Donoghue, did you watch this video?
    Mr. Donoghue. I did, Congressman.
    Mr. Kinzinger. How long was the video?
    Mr. Donoghue. Approximately 20 minutes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let's just take a look at an excerpt of that 
video, if we may.

    Mr. Johnson. What's being said out of Rome, out of Italy is that 
this was done in the U.S. Embassy, that there was a certain State 
Department guy whose name I don't know yet. I guess this is probably 
going to come out in Italy at some point. And he was the mastermind--
not the mastermind, but the--but anyway, the guy running the operation 
of changing the votes. And that he was doing this in conjunction with 
some support from MI6, the CIA, and this Leonardo group.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, what was your reaction when 
you watched that entire 20-minute video?
    Mr. Donoghue. I emailed the Acting Attorney General and I 
said, ``pure insanity,'' which was my impression of the video, 
which was patently absurd.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Rosen, you were asked by Mr. Meadows to 
meet with Mr. Johnson, who is the person in that video. What 
was your reaction to that request?
    Mr. Rosen. So, ordinarily, I would get an email like this 
and there was no phone call. It would just come over the 
transom.
    But this one, he called me, Mr. Meadows, and asked me to 
meet with Mr. Johnson. I told him this whole thing about Italy 
had been debunked and that should be the end of that, and I 
certainly wasn't going to meet with this person.
    He initially seemed to accept that. He said, ``You know, 
well, why won't you meet with him?''
    I said, ``Because if he has real evidence, which this video 
doesn't show, he can walk into an FBI field office anywhere in 
the United States. There are 55 of them.''
    He said, ``Okay.''
    But then he called me back a few minutes later and 
complained and said, ``I didn't tell you, but this fellow, 
Johnson, is working with Rudy Giuliani, and Mr. Giuliani is 
really offended that you think they have to go to an FBI field 
office. That is insulting. So couldn't you just have the FBI or 
you meet with these guys?''
    By then, I was somewhat agitated, and told him that there 
was no way on Earth that I was going to do that. I wasn't going 
to meet with Mr. Johnson. I certainly wasn't going to meet with 
Mr. Giuliani. I had made that clear repeatedly. So that is the 
end of that, you know, don't raise this with me again.
    So because Mr. Donoghue and I had been exchanging our views 
about this--I think it was, yes, 7:13 on a Friday night of New 
Year's Day--had run out of patience. I sent the email that you 
are talking about where I made pretty clear that I had no 
interest in doing anything further with this.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Just to button this up, Mr. Donoghue. Did 
you receive a follow-up call from a Department of Defense 
official about this conspiracy?
    Mr. Donoghue. I did. I believe it was that same day.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Can you give details on that at all?
    Mr. Donoghue. I received a telephone call from Kash Patel, 
who I know was a DOD official at that time, worked for, I 
believe, Acting Secretary of Defense Miller, and he didn't know 
much about it. He basically said, ``Do you know anything about 
this Italy thing and what this is all about?''
    I informed him that the chief of staff had raised the issue 
with us in his office on December 29th, that we had looked into 
it a little bit. We had run the name that was provided to us by 
the chief of staff.
    I learned that that individual was in custody in Italy. He 
had been arrested for a cyber offense of some sort in Italy. 
The allegation was that he had been exfiltrating data from his 
company. He was either an employee or a contractor of that 
company, and he was in custody. That the whole thing was very, 
very murky at best, and the video was absurd. But that we, the 
Department, were not going to have anything do with it and DOD 
should make up its own mind as to what they are going to do. 
But I made it clear to him that I didn't think it was anything 
worth pursuing.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So you called the video absurd, and despite 
the absurdity of that conspiracy theory we learned that Mr. 
Meadows discussed it frequently in the White House.
    Mr. Meadows didn't let the matter go. The request went from 
the Department of Justice to the Secretary of Defense, 
Christopher Miller. As you will hear, Secretary Miller actually 
reached out to a high-ranking official based in Italy to follow 
up on this claim.

    Acting Secretary of Defense Miller. The ask for him was, ``Can you 
call out the Defense Attache Rome and find out what the heck's going on 
because I'm getting all these weird, crazy reports and probably the guy 
on the ground knows more than anything?''

    Mr. Kinzinger. The Select Committee confirmed that a call 
was actually placed by Secretary Miller to the attache in Italy 
to investigate the claim that Italian satellites were switching 
votes from Trump to Biden.
    This is one of the best examples of the lengths to which 
President Trump would go to stay in power--scouring the 
internet to support his conspiracy theories shown here, as he 
told Mr. Donoghue in that December 27th call, ``You guys may 
not be following the internet the way I do.''
    President Trump's efforts to this point had failed. 
Stonewalled by Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue, President Trump had 
only one option: He needed to make Clark Acting Attorney 
General.
    Mr. Rosen, during a January 2nd meeting with Mr. Clark, did 
you confront him again about his contact with the President? If 
so, can you describe that?
    Mr. Rosen. So at this point Mr. Clark had told us that the 
President had asked him to consider whether he would be willing 
to replace me, supposedly on a time table by Monday the 4th.
    So I had told Mr. Clark I thought he was making a colossal 
error in judgment, but I also hoped to persuade him to be more 
rational and to understood what we had understood, that there 
is not a factual basis for the fraud assertions that are being 
made.
    So at this meeting, Mr. Donoghue and I met with Mr. Clark, 
and I guess my hopes were disappointed in that Mr. Clark 
continued to express a view that he thought there was fraud, 
even though he had not been a participant in the Department's 
review of that, and that he was dissatisfied that we knew what 
we were doing.
    But he had acknowledged that he had had further--I don't 
know if it was a meeting or phone calls or what--but further 
discussion with the President despite having a week earlier 
said that he, (A), wouldn't do that, and if did, if he got an 
invitation to do that, he would let Rich Donoghue or me know.
    So we had--it was a contentious meeting where we were 
chastising him that he was insubordinate, he was out of line, 
he had not honored his own representations of what he would do. 
He raised, again, that he thought that letter should go out and 
we were not receptive to that.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did he tell you in that that the President 
had offered him the job of Acting Attorney General?
    Mr. Rosen. That was a day later. On the 2nd, he said that 
the President had asked him to let him know if he would be 
willing to take it.
    Subsequently, he told me that--on Sunday, the 3rd--he told 
me that the time line had moved up and that the President had 
offered him the job and that he was accepting it.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Let me ask you about that.
    What was your reaction to that?
    Mr. Rosen. Well, on the one hand, I wasn't going to accept 
being fired by my subordinate, so I wanted to talk to the 
President directly.
    With regard to--the reason for that is I wanted to try to 
convince the President not to go down the wrong path that Mr. 
Clark seemed to be advocating.
    It wasn't about me. There are only 17 days left in the 
administration at that point. I would have been perfectly 
content to have either of the gentleman on my left or right 
replace me if anybody wanted to do that.
    But I did not want for Department of Justice to be put in a 
posture where it would be doing things that were not consistent 
with the truth, were not consistent with its own appropriate 
role, or were not consistent with the Constitution.
    So I did four things as soon as Mr. Clark left my office on 
that Sunday, the 3rd.
    No. 1, I called Mark Meadows and said I need to see the 
President right away. He was agreeable and set up a meeting for 
6:15 that Sunday, so about 2 hours away.
    No. 2, I called Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel, 
told him what was going on, and he said he would go into the 
White House to make sure he was at the meeting, and he would be 
supporting the Justice Department's position as he had been 
doing consistently.
    No. 3, I called Steve Engel, who was--I was at the 
Department. It was a Sunday, but there had been some reasons I 
needed to be there. Mr. Engel I called at home and asked him if 
he would come in and go to the meeting, which he did and proved 
to be quite helpful.
    Then, No. 4, I asked Rich Donoghue and Pat Hovakimian, who 
had previously been my chief of staff, to get the Department's 
senior leadership on a call and let them know what was going 
on, which they did.
    Then Eric Herschmann called me to tell me that he was going 
to go to the meeting and that he would be supporting the 
Department of Justice position as well.
    So I knew that the meeting was on course and that I would 
have a number of people supportive of the Department of 
Justice's approach and not supportive of Mr. Clark's approach.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did Mr. Clark ask you to continue to stay at 
the Department?
    Mr. Rosen. At that Sunday meeting when he told me that he 
would be replacing me, he said he had asked to see me alone, 
because usually he had met with me and Mr. Donoghue, because he 
thought it would be appropriate in light of what was happening 
to at least offer me that I could stay on as his deputy.
    I thought that was preposterous, told him that was 
nonsensical, and that there is no universe where I was going to 
do that, to stay on and support someone else doing things that 
were not consistent with what I thought should be done.
    So I didn't accept that offer, if I can put it that way.
    Mr. Kinzinger. During that meeting, did Mr. Clark ask you 
to sign the Georgia letter?
    Mr. Rosen. That was on the Saturday meeting, January 2nd, 
that Mr. Donoghue and I had with him. He again raised with both 
of us that he wanted us both to sign that letter actually.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So in that meeting, did Mr. Clark say he 
would turn down the President's offer if you reversed your 
position and signed the letter?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did Mr. Clark--so you still refused to sign 
and send that letter, I take it?
    Mr. Rosen. That is right. I think Mr. Donoghue and I were 
both very consistent that there was no way we were going to 
sign that letter. It didn't matter what Mr. Clark's proposition 
was in terms of his own activities, we were not going to sign 
that letter as long as we were in charge of the Justice 
Department.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you for that, by the way.
    Mr. Donoghue, were you expecting to have to attend a 
meeting at the White House on Sunday, January 3rd?
    Mr. Donoghue. No. As the Acting AG indicated, we had a 
meeting that afternoon that related to preparations for January 
6th.
    So I was at the Department, but I had no expectation of 
leaving the Department. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was 
there in civilian clothes, as we both were, and expected to 
have that meeting, do some other work.
    But I had no expectation of going to the White House that 
day.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So let's ask, so prior to that Oval Office 
meeting, did you set up a conference call with senior 
leadership at the Department? If so, tell us about that call.
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes. So, obviously, it was a bit of a 
scramble that afternoon to prepare for the Oval Office meeting. 
We had discussed on several occasions, the Acting Attorney 
General and I, whether we should expand the circle of people 
who knew what was going on.
    It was very important that Steve Engel know, and that is 
why I reached out to Steve on December 28th, because if Mr. 
Rosen were removed from the seat and the President did not 
immediately appoint someone else to serve as Attorney General, 
just by function of the Department's change of succession Mr. 
Engel would be in the seat. We wanted to make sure he knew what 
was going on should that occur.
    So the three of us knew. We also brought Pat Hovakimian in. 
So the four of us knew. But no one else, aside from Jeff Clark, 
of course, knew what was going on until late that Sunday 
afternoon. We chose to keep a close hold because we didn't want 
to create concern or panic in the Justice Department 
leadership.
    But at this point, I asked the Acting AG, ``What else can I 
do to help prepare for this meeting at the Oval Office?''
    He said, ``You and Pat should get the AAGs on the phone and 
it is time to let them know what is going on. Let's find out 
what they may do if there is a change in leadership, because 
that will help inform the conversation at the Oval Office.''
    Pat Hovakimian subsequently set up that meeting. We got 
most, not all, but most of the AAGs on the phone. We very 
quickly explained to them what the situation was.
    I told them, ``I don't need an answer from you right now. I 
don't need an answer on this phone call. But if you have an 
answer, I need it in the next few minutes. So call me, email, 
text me, whatever it is, if you know what you would do if Jeff 
Clark is put in charge of the Department.''
    Immediately Eric Dreiband, who was the AAG of the Civil 
Rights Division, said, ``I don't need to think about it. There 
is no way I am staying.''
    Then the other AAGs began to chime in in turn and all 
essentially said they would leave. They would resign en masse 
if the President made that change in the Department leadership.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Incredible.
    I would like to look at the Assistant Attorney Generals on 
the screen, if we can pull that up, have their pictures.
    Did every Assistant Attorney General that you spoke to, as 
you said, agree to resign?
    Mr. Donoghue. Makan Delrahim was not on the call only 
because we had some difficulty reaching him.
    But, yes, the other people on the screen were on the call 
and all without hesitation said that they would resign.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So as part of the Select Committee's 
investigation we found that while Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue, and 
Mr. Engel were preparing for their meeting at the White House, 
Jeff Clark and the President were in constant communication, 
beginning at 
7 a.m.
    White House call logs obtained by the Committee show that 
by 4:19 p.m. on January 3rd, the White House had already begun 
referring to Mr. Clark as the Acting Attorney General. As far 
as the White House was concerned, Mr. Clark was already at the 
top of the Justice Department.
    Two hours later, DOJ leadership arrived at the White House. 
The Select Committee interviewed every person who was inside 
the room during this Sunday evening Oval Office meeting.
    Mr. Cipollone told the Committee that he was ``unmistakably 
angry'' during the meeting and that he, along with Eric 
Herschmann and Mr. Donoghue ``forcefully challenged'' Mr. Clark 
to produce evidence of his election fraud theories.
    Mr. Rosen, can you describe how that meeting started?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes.
    So after some preliminaries--so we--Mr. Meadows had ushered 
us all in, and then he left. So Mr. Cipollone did some 
introductions.
    So after some preliminaries, the President turned to me, 
and he said, ``Well, one thing we know is you, Rosen, you 
aren't going to do anything. You don't even agree with the 
claims of election fraud. This other guy at least might do 
something.''
    Then I said, ``Well, Mr. President, you are right that I am 
not going to allow the Justice Department to do anything to try 
to overturn the election. That is true. But the reason for that 
is because that is what is consistent with the facts and the 
law and that is what is required under the Constitution. So 
that is the right answer and a good thing for the country. 
Therefore, I submit it is the right thing for you, Mr. 
President.''
    That kicked off another 2 hours of discussion in which 
everyone in the room was in one way or another making different 
points, but supportive of my approach for the Justice 
Department and critical of Mr. Clark.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So at some point, Mr. Donoghue comes in the 
room. Can you explain what led to him coming in the room?
    Mr. Rosen. Oh, I forgot about that.
    So initially, in part I think because he was underdressed, 
and we had not arranged--we had not yet told the President that 
he was going to come in--the White House had a list of who 
would be there that did include Mr. Engel, and the White House 
Counsel, and the Deputy White House Counsel, Mr. Herschmann.
    We went in, and then we told the President, maybe 10 
minutes into the meeting or something, I forget how far in, Mr. 
Donoghue was outside. He said, ``Well, bring him in.'' Then Mr. 
Donoghue came in and joined the meeting.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So, Mr. Donoghue, you enter that room. Can 
you set the scene for us and describe the tone you walked into?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes. But if I could just back up one moment, 
Congressman, because you put the pictures up on the screen of 
the AAGs.
    I just want to make clear, one of the AAGs who was not on 
the screen was John Demers. John was the National Security 
Division AAG.
    John was on the call. But I prefaced the call by saying, 
``John, we need you to stay in place. National security is too 
important. We need to minimize the disruption. Whether you 
resign is entirely up to you. Obviously, we will respect your 
decision either way. But I am asking you, please stay in 
place.''
    He did. So I don't want to leave the impression that he was 
not willing to resign, because I think he was.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Great. Thank you for that.
    Mr. Donoghue. So with regard to entering the Oval Office, I 
was sitting in the hallway. An administrative assistant passed 
by.
    She asked me, ``Are you supposed to be in this meeting with 
the President?''
    I said, ``No. I am simply here in case questions come up 
that other people don't have the answer to.''
    She walked away and then came back probably 30 seconds 
later and said, ``The President wants you in the meeting.''
    I proceeded into the Oval Office. I took probably two or 
three steps in and I stopped, because I was, as the AG said, 
not exactly properly attired. I was wearing jeans and muddy 
boots and an Army T-shirt, and I never would arrive in the Oval 
Office this way.
    I said, ``Mr. President, I apologize. I am sorry. I didn't 
know I was going to be here.''
    He said, ``No, no, no. Just come in, come in, come in.''
    So I went in. I attempted to take a seat on one of the 
couches that are behind the chairs arrayed in front of the 
President's desk. He said, ``Oh, no, no, no. You are going to 
be up here.''
    Everyone kind-of laughed. They moved the chairs a little 
bit. Someone from the White House Counsel's Office picked up a 
spare chair and put it directly in front of the President and I 
took that seat.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Was there discussion about Mr. Clark? Can 
you kind-of enlighten some of what that discussion was?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes. So the conversation at this point had 
moved beyond the specific allegations, whether it was State 
Farm Arena or Antrim County or Pennsylvania or whatever. We had 
discussed those repeatedly, and that was backdrop to the 
conversation.
    But the conversation at this point was really about whether 
the President should remove Jeff Rosen and replace him with 
Jeff Clark. Everyone in the room, I think, understood that that 
meant that letter would go out.
    So that was the focus. It was about a 2\1/2\-hour meeting 
after I entered. So there were discussions about the pros and 
cons of doing that.
    Early on, the President said, ``What do I have to lose?''
    It was actually a good opening, because I said, ``Mr. 
President, you have a great deal to lose.''
    I began to explain to him what he had to lose and what the 
country had to lose and what the Department had to lose, and 
this was not in anyone's best interest.
    That conversation went on for some time. Everyone 
essentially chimed in with their own thoughts, all of which 
were consistent about how damaging this would be to the 
country, to the Department, to the administration, to him 
personally.
    At some point the conversation turned to whether Jeff Clark 
was even qualified, competent to run the Justice Department, 
which in my mind he clearly was not.
    It was a heated conversation. I thought it was useful to 
point out to the President that Jeff Clark simply didn't have 
the skills, the ability, and the experience to run the 
Department.
    So I said, ``Mr. President, you are talking about putting a 
man in that seat who has never tried a criminal case, who has 
never conducted a criminal investigation. He is telling you 
that he is going to take charge of the Department, 115,000 
employees, including the entire FBI, and turn the place on a 
dime and conduct nationwide criminal investigations that will 
produce results in a matter of days. It is impossible. It is 
absurd. It is not going to happen. It is going to fail.''
    ``He has never been in front of a trial jury, a grand jury. 
He has never even been to Chris Wray's office.''
    I said at one point, ``If you walk into Chris Wray's 
office, No. 1, would you know how to get there? No. 2, if you 
got there, would he even know who you are? Do you really think 
that the FBI is going to suddenly start following your 
orders?''
    ``It is not going to happen. He is not competent.''
    That is the point at which Mr. Clark tried to defend 
himself by saying, ``Well, I have been involved in very 
significant civil and environmental litigation. I have argued 
many appeals in appellate courts and things of that nature.''
    Then I pointed out that, yes, he was an environmental 
lawyer, and I didn't think that was appropriate background to 
be running the United States Justice Department.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did anybody in there support Mr. Clark?
    Mr. Donoghue. No one.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Rosen, it was you he was going to 
replace. So what was your view about the President's plan to 
appoint Mr. Clark?
    Mr. Rosen. Well, as I alluded to earlier, the issue really 
wasn't about me. It was--it would have been fine, as I said, to 
have had Rich Donoghue replace me. I would have said, ``Great, 
I get 17 days vacation,'' or something.
    But the issue was the use of the Justice Department. It is 
just so important that the Justice Department adhere to the 
facts and the law.
    That is what it is there to do, and that is what our 
constitutional role was. So if the Justice Department gets out 
of the role that it is supposed to play, that is really bad for 
our country, and I don't know of a simpler way to say that. 
When you damage our fundamental institutions, it is not easy to 
repair them.
    So I thought this was a really important issue--to try to 
make sure that the Justice Department was able to stay on the 
right course.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, did you eventually tell the 
President that mass resignations would occur if he installed 
Mr. Clark and what the consequences would be?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes. So this was in line with the President 
saying, ``What do I have to lose?'' Along those lines, he said, 
``So suppose I do this, suppose I replace him, Jeff Rosen, with 
him, Jeff Clark. What would you do?''
    I said, ``Mr. President, I would resign immediately. I am 
not working 1 minute for this guy,'' who I had just declared 
was completely incompetent.
    So the President immediately turned to Mr. Engel, and he 
said, ``Steve you wouldn't resign, would you?''
    He said, ``Absolutely I would, Mr. President. You leave me 
no choice.''
    Then I said, ``And we are not the only ones. No one cares 
if we resign. If Steve and I go, that is fine. It doesn't 
matter. But I am telling you what is going to happen. You are 
going to lose your entire Department leadership. Every single 
AAG will walk out on you. Your entire Department leadership 
will walk out within hours. I don't know what happens after 
that. I don't know what the United States attorneys are going 
to do.''
    We have U.S. attorneys in districts across the country, and 
my guess would be that many of them would have resigned, and 
that would then have led to resignations across the Department 
in Washington.
    I said, ``Mr. President, within 24, 48, 72 hours, you could 
have hundreds and hundreds of resignations of the leadership of 
your entire Justice Department because of your actions. What is 
that going to say about you?''
    Mr. Kinzinger. Wow.
    Mr. Engel, what was--can you describe what your reaction 
was to that?
    Mr. Engel. Yes. No, I think when the President--my 
recollection is that when the President turned to me and said, 
``Steve, you wouldn't leave, would you?'' I said, ``Mr. 
President, I have been with you through four Attorneys General, 
including two Acting Attorneys General, but I couldn't be part 
of this.''
    Then the other thing that I said was that, you know, 
``Look, all anyone is going to sort-of think about when they 
see this--no one is going to read this letter. All anyone is 
going to think is that you went through two Attorneys General 
in 2 weeks until you found the environmental guy to sign this 
thing.''
    ``So the story is not going to be that the Department of 
Justice has found massive corruption that would have changed 
the results of the election. It is going to be the disaster of 
Jeff Clark.''
    I think at that point Pat Cipollone said, ``Yes, this is a 
murder-suicide pact, this letter.''
    Mr. Donoghue. I would note too, Congressman, that it was in 
this part of the conversation where Steve pointed out that Jeff 
Clark would be left leading a graveyard. That comment clearly 
had an impact on the President. The leadership will be gone. 
Jeff Clark will be left leading a graveyard.
    Mr. Engel. Again, the premise that--which Mr. Donoghue had 
said--but that Mr. Clark could come in and take over the 
Department of Justice and do something different was just an 
absurd premise. All he was doing, Mr. Clark, by putting himself 
forward, was blowing himself up. If the President were to have 
gone that course, you know, it would have been a grievous error 
for the President as well.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Cipollone, the White House Counsel, told 
the Committee that Mr. Engel's response had a noticeable impact 
on the President, that this was a turning point in the 
conversation.
    Mr. Donoghue, toward the end of this meeting, did the 
President ask you what was going to happen to Mr. Clark?
    Mr. Donoghue. He did. When we finally got to, I would say, 
the last 15 minutes of the meeting, the President's decision 
was apparent. He announced it. Jeff Clark tried to scrape his 
way back and asked the President to reconsider. The President 
doubled down and said, ``No, I have made my decision. That is 
it. We are not going to do it.''
    Then he turned to me and said, ``So what happens to him 
now?'' meaning Mr. Clark, and he understood that Mr. Clark 
reported to me.
    I didn't initially understand the question. I said, ``Mr. 
President?''
    He said, ``Are you going to fire him?''
    I said, ``I don't have the authority to fire him. He is a 
Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General.''
    He said, ``Well who has the authority to fire him?''
    I said, ``Only you do, sir.''
    He said, ``Well, I am not going to fire him.''
    I said, ``All right. Well, then, we should all go back to 
work.''
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did you get a call from the President later 
that night?
    Mr. Donoghue. I did, I don't know, probably 90 minutes 
later or something like that.
    Mr. Kinzinger. What was that about?
    Mr. Donoghue. The President at this point--we left the 
White House, reconvened at the Department. I left the 
Department. I was back in my apartment. My cell phone rang, it 
was the President, and he had information about a truck 
supposedly full of shredded ballots in Georgia that was in the 
custody of an ICE agent whose name he had.
    I told him that ICE was part of Department of Homeland 
Security. I hadn't heard about this. If Department of Homeland 
Security needed our assistance, we, of course, would provide 
it. But it was really up to DHS to make a call if their agent 
was involved.
    He said, ``Fine, I understand. Can you just make sure that 
Ken,'' meaning Ken Cuccinelli, ``knows about this?''
    I said fine, I would pass that along to him. I eventually 
contacted Ken Cuccinelli later that evening, and I said, ``This 
is what the President told me. If you guys have anything you 
think should be brought to our attention, let me know.''
    He said, ``Thank you.'' That was it.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Cipollone left the meeting convinced the 
President would not appoint Mr. Clark, but he didn't think the 
President had actually accepted the truth about the election. 
Sure enough, all the same debunked theories appeared in his 
speech at the Ellipse 3 days later.

    President Trump. In the State of Arizona, over 36,000 ballots were 
illegally cast by non-citizens, 11,600 more ballots than votes were 
counted, more than there were actual voters. You see that? In 
Wisconsin, corrupt Democrat-run cities deployed more than 500 illegal, 
unmanned, unsecured drop boxes, which collected a minimum of 91,000 
unlawful votes.

    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, Mr. Rosen, Mr. Engel, and 
others stopped President Trump's efforts at least temporarily. 
Yet the message President Trump and his Republican allies 
pushed throughout December made its way to his supporters 
anyway. They kept up the pressure campaign on the way to 
storming the Capitol on January 6th.
    Mr. Rosen, were you at the Department of Justice on January 
6th?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes, I was there all day.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Once the Capitol was under attack, I 
understand that you communicated with fellow Cabinet members 
and Capitol Hill leadership. Can you tell us who you spoke to?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes. I was basically on the phone virtually 
nonstop all day, some calls with our own DOJ folks, some with 
Cabinet counterparts at DHS and Defense and Interior, some with 
senior White House officials and with a number of congressional 
leaders.
    I received calls from Speaker Pelosi, from Leader McCarthy, 
from Leader Schumer. I believe Leader McConnell's chief of 
staff called; a number of other Members of Congress as well.
    You know, the basic thrust of the calls with the Members of 
Congress was, ``There is a dire situation here, and can you 
help?'' I reported to them that we were on a very urgent basis 
sending help from the Department.
    We wound up sending over 500 agents and officers from FBI, 
ATF, and the U.S. Marshals to assist with restoring order at 
the Capitol.
    So had a number of calls. As I say, it was more or less 
nonstop all afternoon.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did you speak to the Vice President that 
day?
    Mr. Rosen. Yes. Twice. The----
    Mr. Kinzinger. No. Please, go ahead.
    Mr. Rosen. Well, I was going to say the first call was a 
one-on-one discussion, somewhat akin to the congressional 
leadership calls, updating him on what we were doing to assist.
    The second call was a conference call around 7 o'clock with 
the Vice President, congressional leaders, senior White House 
staff, some other Cabinet officials, to address that order 
appeared to be close to being restored or restored, but 
security is still being determined, and the question being what 
time could the Congress reassemble. The answer was 8 o'clock. 
Thankfully Congress did reassemble and complete its 
constitutional duty.
    There was one highlight of that second call with the Vice 
President, which is Mr. Donoghue had gone to the Rotunda of the 
Capitol to be able to give a first-hand account and was able to 
tell the folks on the call, including the Vice President, that 
we thought 8 o'clock would work.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Did you speak to the President on January 
6th?
    Mr. Rosen. No. I spoke to a number of senior White House 
officials, but not the President.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, on January 6th, we know from 
Mr. Rosen that you helped in the effort to reconvene the joint 
session. Is that correct?
    Mr. Donoghue. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Kinzinger. We see here in a video that we are going to 
play now you arriving with your security detail to help secure 
the Capitol.
    Mr. Donoghue, 30 minutes after you arrived to the Capitol, 
did you lead a briefing for the Vice President?
    Mr. Donoghue. I am not sure exactly what the time frame 
was, but I did participate in the call and participate in 
briefing the Vice President as well as the congressional 
leadership that night, yes.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Where did you conduct that call at?
    Mr. Donoghue. I was in an office. I am not entirely sure 
where it was. My detail found it, because the acoustics in the 
rotunda were such that it wasn't really conducive to having a 
call. So they found an office. We went to that office. I 
believe I participated in two phone calls, one at 1800 and one 
at 1900, that night from that office.
    Mr. Kinzinger. What time did you actually end up leaving 
the Capitol?
    Mr. Donoghue. I waited until the Senate was back in 
session, which I believe they were gaveled in a few minutes 
after 8 p.m. Once they were back in session and we were 
confident that the entire facility was secured and cleared, 
that there were no individuals hiding in closets or under 
desks, that there were no IEDs or other suspicious devices left 
behind, I left minutes later. I was probably gone by 8:30.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Mr. Donoghue, did you ever hear from 
President Trump that day?
    Mr. Donoghue. No. Like the AAG, the Acting AG, I spoke to 
Pat Cipollone and Mark Meadows and the Vice President and the 
congressional leadership, but I never spoke to the President 
that day.
    Mr. Kinzinger. So today's hearing showcased the efforts of 
the Americans before us to stand up for democracy. Mr. Rosen 
and Mr. Donoghue stayed steadfastly committed to the oath they 
take as officials in the Department of Justice. On January 6th 
itself, they assisted during the attack while our Commander-in-
Chief stayed silent. Their bravery is a high moment in the 
sordid story of what led to January 6th.
    My colleagues and I up here also take an oath. Some of them 
failed to uphold theirs and, instead, chose to spread the big 
lie.
    Days after the tragic events of January 6th, some of these 
same Republican Members requested pardons in the waning days of 
the Trump administration.
    Five days after the attack on the Capitol, Representative 
Mo Brooks sent the email on the screen now. As you see, he 
emailed the White House, ``pursuant to a request from Matt 
Gaetz,'' requesting a pardon for Representative Gaetz, himself, 
and unnamed others.
    Witnesses told the Select Committee that the President 
considered offering pardons to a wide range of individuals 
connected to the President. Let's listen to some of that 
testimony.

    Mr. Wood. And was Representative Gaetz requesting a pardon?
    Mr. Herschmann. I believe so. The--the general tone was we may get 
prosecuted because we were defensive of, you know, the President's 
positions on these things. The pardon that he was discussing--
requesting was as broad as you can describe, from beginning--I remember 
he's--from the beginning of time up until today for any and all things. 
Then he mentioned Nixon, and I said, ``Nixon's pardon was never nearly 
that broad.''
    Vice Chair Cheney. And are you aware of any Members of Congress 
seeking pardons?
    Ms. Hutchinson. I guess Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Brooks, I know, have both 
advocated for there'd be a blanket pardon for Members involved in that 
meeting and a--a handful of other Members that weren't at the December 
21st meeting as the preemptive pardons. Mr. Gaetz was personally 
pushing for a pardon, and he was doing so since early December. I'm not 
sure why Mr. Gaetz reached out to me to ask if he could have a meeting 
with Mr. Meadows about receiving a Presidential pardon.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Did they all contact you?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Not all of them, but several of them did.
    Vice Chair Cheney. So you mentioned Mr. Gaetz, Mr. Brooks.
    Ms. Hutchinson. Mr. Biggs did. Mr. Jordan talked about 
congressional pardons, but he never asked me for one. It was more for 
an update on whether the White House was going to pardon Members of 
Congress. Mr. Gohmert asked for one as well. Mr. Perry asked for a 
pardon, too, I'm sorry.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Mr. Perry? Did he talk to you directly?
    Ms. Hutchinson. Yes, he did.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Did Marjorie Taylor Greene contact you?
    Ms. Hutchinson. No, she didn't contact me about it. I heard that 
she had asked White House Counsel's Office for a pardon from Mr. 
Philbin, but I didn't frequently communicate with Ms. Greene.
    Mr. Wood. Are you aware of any conversations or communications 
regarding the possibility of giving Congressman Matt Gaetz a pardon?
    Mr. McEntee. I know he had asked for it, but I don't know if he 
ever received one or what happened with it.
    Mr. Wood. How do you know that Congressman Gaetz asked for a 
pardon?
    Mr. McEntee. He told me.
    Mr. Wood. Tell us about that.
    Mr. McEntee. He told me he'd asked Meadows for a pardon.
    Mr. Wood. Were you involved in or did you witness any conversations 
about the possibility of a blanket pardon for everyone involved in 
January 6th?
    Mr. McEntee. I had heard that mentioned, yeah.
    Mr. Wood. Do you know whether the President had any conversations 
about potentially pardoning any family members?
    Mr. McEntee. I know he had hinted at a blanket pardon for the 
January 6th thing for anybody, but I think he had for all the staff and 
everyone involved, not with January 6th, but just before he left 
office, I know he had talked about that.

    Mr. Kinzinger. The only reason I know to ask for a pardon 
is because you think you have committed a crime.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. I want to thank our witnesses for 
joining us today.
    The Members of the Select Committee may have additional 
questions for today's witnesses, and we ask that you respond 
expeditiously in writing to these questions.
    Without objection, Members will be permitted 10 business 
days to submit statements for the record, including opening 
remarks and additional questions for the witnesses.
    Without objection, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois for a closing statement.
    Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Justice Department lawyers are not the President's 
personal lawyers. We count on them to be on the side of the law 
and to defend the best interests of the United States, not the 
best interests of any political campaign. That is how it has 
been since the Department was founded soon after the Civil War. 
Justice Department lawyers are supposed to play it 100 percent 
straight.
    President Trump tried to erase his loss at the ballot box 
by parachuting an unqualified man into the top job at Justice. 
It was a power play to win at all costs, with no regard for the 
will of the American people. It was about ignoring millions of 
votes. Ignore them, throw them out, label them fraudulent, 
corrupt, illegal, whatever. Facts were clearly just an 
inconvenience.
    From the Oval Office, President Trump urged others to bring 
his big lie to life. He begged, ``Just say the election was 
corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the Republican 
Congressmen.'' He didn't care what the Department's 
investigations proved. What good were facts when they would 
only confirm his loss?
    It is no surprise that all the far-out, fully fabricated, 
whack-job conspiracy theories collapsed under even the 
slightest scrutiny. That insanity went from the internet to the 
highest levels of Government in no time.
    The bottom line? The most senior leadership of the Justice 
Department, from Attorney General Bill Barr to Jeff Rosen, his 
successor, and his deputy, Rich Donoghue--everyone except Jeff 
Clark--was telling President Trump the very same thing: The 
conspiracy theories were false. The allegation of a stolen 
election was a lie. The data left no room for doubt, nothing to 
question. The Constitution left no room for President Trump to 
change the outcome of the election.
    But we are here today because the facts were irrelevant to 
President Trump. It was about protecting his very real power 
and very fragile ego, even if it required recklessly 
undermining our entire electoral system by wildly casting 
baseless doubt upon it.
    In short, he was willing to sacrifice our Republic to 
prolong his Presidency. I can imagine no more dishonorable act 
by a President.
    We owe a great debt of gratitude to these men you have 
heard from here today. Real leaders who stood for Justice when 
it was in grave peril, who put their country first when the 
leader of the free world demanded otherwise. They threatened to 
resign rather than corrupt our democracy. Thanks largely to 
each of them, President Trump's coup failed.
    Contrast that to Jeff Clark, who would do exactly what the 
President wanted: Say there was massive fraud, forget the 
facts, and leave the rest to President Trump's congressional 
friends.
    Mr. Clark refused to cooperate with this Committee. He pled 
the Fifth over 125 times. Why risk self-incrimination?
    President Trump's congressional friends--some of them are 
angling for pardons? They knew that every bit of what they did 
was a lie and it was wrong.
    That is all the more reason to respect those who came here 
to testify today. We thank them for their unflinching service 
in the face of incredible pressure.
    As it is said, ``The only thing necessary for evil to 
succeed is good men to do nothing.'' Thankfully, there were 
good people in the Department of Justice.
    You heard from other good people, too, on Tuesday. They, 
too, defended us.
    But I am still worried that not enough has changed to 
prevent this from happening again.
    The oath that we take has to mean something. It has to cut 
to the core of who we are and be the driving force of our 
service to this Nation.
    We on this Committee, we may be able to shine light on the 
darkness, but that is not enough. It is now up to every 
American, now and in the future, to stand for truth, to reject 
the lies, wherever we confront them--in our towns, in our 
capitals, in our friendships, in our families, and at the 
ballot box, and within our own minds and hearts.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Without objection, the Chair recognizes 
the gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Cheney, for a closing 
statement.
    Vice Chair Cheney. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    I again want to thank the witnesses for being here today.
    After today, I suspect that there will be some who label 
you agents of the deep state or something else conspiratorial 
or nonsensical meant to justify ignoring what you have said 
today, ignoring the facts.
    That may be the short-term cost of acting honorably and 
telling the truth, but your actions should have an important 
long-term impact. They will help keep us on the course set by 
the Framers of our Constitution.
    Let me paraphrase the words of John Adams and others: 
Whether ours shall continue to be a Government of laws and not 
of men is ultimately for the American people to decide.
    Let me also today make a broader statement to millions of 
Americans who put their trust in Donald Trump.
    In these hearings so far, you have heard from more than a 
dozen Republicans who have told you what actually happened in 
the weeks before January 6th. You will hear from more in the 
hearings to come. Several of them served Donald Trump in his 
administration; others, in his campaign. Others have been 
conservative Republicans for their entire careers.
    It can be difficult to accept that President Trump abused 
your trust, that he deceived you. Many will invent excuses to 
ignore that fact. But that is a fact. I wish it weren't true, 
but it is.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Thompson. Again, I thank our witnesses and thank 
my colleagues for this hearing.
    As we conclude our fifth hearing in this series, I want to 
remind the American people of a few things the Committee has 
shown.
    Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Top Republican 
officials who supported Trump knew that he lost and told him he 
lost. Trump knew he lost.
    Those who say the election was affected by widespread voter 
fraud are lying. They were lying in 2020, they were lying in 
2021, and, indeed, they are lying today.
    Donald Trump went to court. That is the right of any 
candidate seeking to challenge the outcome of an election. 
Donald Trump lost in court dozens and dozens of times.
    He lost in part because there was no evidence that voter 
fraud had any impact on the results of the election. To borrow 
a phrase from our witness earlier this week, Mr. Bowers, all he 
had was theories and no evidence.
    As I have said, if you are running for office in the United 
States, that is the end of the line. You accept the court's 
judgment. You concede the race. You respect the rule of law and 
the will of the voters.
    But for Donald Trump, that wasn't the end of the line. Not 
even close.
    The voters refused to keep him in office. The courts 
refused to keep him in office. But he continued to lie. He went 
in search of anyone who would go along with his scheme.
    As we have shown today, he pressured the Justice Department 
to act as an arm of his reelection campaign. He hoped law 
enforcement officials would give the appearance of legitimacy 
to his lies so he and his allies had some veneer of credibility 
when they told the country that the election was stolen.
    Earlier this week, we showed how Donald Trump brought the 
weight of the Presidency down on local and State officials who 
were trying to do their jobs--and ultimately did. They 
investigated his claims and found them to be false. Then they 
endured Trump's pressure campaign, at great risk to themselves 
and their loved ones.
    Of course, there was the scheme to get the former Vice 
President, Mike Pence, to violate the law and the Constitution 
by rejecting the electoral college votes on January 6th and 
blocking the peaceful transfer of power.
    I mention the former Vice President last because, as we 
showed, when he refused to bow to the pressure in those 
critical moments on January 6th, there was a back-up plan for 
stopping the transfer of power: The mob and their vile threats.
    Up to this point, we have shown the inner workings of what 
was essentially a political coup--an attempt to use the powers 
of the Government, from the local level all the way up, to 
overturn the results of the election.
    Find me the votes. Send fake electors. Just say the 
election was corrupt.
    Along the way, we saw threats of violence; we saw what some 
people were willing to do. In service of the Nation? Of the 
Constitution? No. In service of Donald Trump.
    When the Select Committee continues this series of 
hearings, we are going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the 
threat of violence; how he summoned the mob to Washington; and 
how, after corruption and political pressure failed to keep 
Donald Trump in office, violence became the last option.
    Our investigation is ongoing. Those hearings have spurred 
an influx of new information that the Committee and our 
investigators are working to assess. We are committed to 
presenting the American people with the most complete 
information possible. That will be our aim when we reconvene in 
the coming weeks.
    The Chair requests those in the hearing room remain seated 
until the Capitol Police have escorted Members from the room.
    Without objection, the Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 5:28 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]



                            A P P E N D I X

                              ----------                              

 Prepared Statement of Jeffrey A. Rosen, Former Acting Attorney General
                             June 15, 2022
    Chairman Thompson and Vice Chair Cheney, thank you for inviting me 
to appear here today with my former colleagues Richard Donoghue and 
Steven Engel. Serving alongside them and the many other dedicated 
employees of the Justice Department was an extraordinary honor. They 
were and are an exceptional team of public servants who always put the 
best interests of our Country first. In the interest of time, I have 
submitted a copy of my prior opening statements to the House Oversight 
Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee, and would ask that both be 
entered into the public record.
    With respect to my tenure at the Department of Justice, my priority 
was to ensure the Department would always proceed on the basis of the 
facts and the legal merits, to enforce the Constitution and preserve 
the rule of law. We did that with unfailing fidelity under sometimes 
very challenging circumstances.
    During my tenure as Acting Attorney General, the Justice Department 
maintained the position that the Department had been presented with no 
evidence of widespread voter fraud at a scale sufficient to change the 
outcome of the 2020 election. We thus held firm to the position that 
the Department would not participate in any campaign's or political 
party's legal challenges to the certification of the Electoral College 
votes. We also insisted that there must be an orderly and peaceful 
transfer of power under the Constitution. In particular, during my 
tenure, we appointed no special prosecutors; sent no letters to States 
or State legislators disputing the election outcome; and made no public 
statements saying the election was corrupt and should be overturned. We 
initiated no Supreme Court actions, nor filed or joined any other 
lawsuits, calling into question the legitimacy of our election and 
institutions. To the contrary, the only time the Department filed a 
brief in court, it was to say that a Congress Member's lawsuit to 
overturn the election should be dismissed, as it was.
    Some argued to the former President and public that the election 
was corrupt and stolen. That view was wrong then and it is wrong today, 
and I hope our presence here today helps reaffirm that fact.
    Thank you and I am happy to answer your questions.
                                 ______
                                 
Hearing Before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight 
                               and Reform
                              May 12, 2021
  Testimony of Jeffrey A. Rosen, Former Acting United States Attorney 
                  General and Deputy Attorney General
    Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member Comer, and Members of the 
Committee, good morning and thank you for the opportunity to join this 
hearing today. Because this is my first appearance before this 
Committee since June 2005, please allow me to introduce myself again. I 
am Jeff Rosen, and from December 24, 2020 to January 20, 2021, I had 
the honor and privilege of serving as the Acting Attorney General of 
the United States. Since graduating from law school in 1982, I have 
lived and worked in our nation's capital region, including more than 9 
years of public service at three different Federal agencies. My first 
position was as General Counsel of the Department of Transportation 
under Secretary Norman Mineta, followed by service as General Counsel 
and Senior Advisor at the Office of Management & Budget under then-
Director, now-Senator Rob Portman. After several years back in private 
practice, I was Deputy Secretary of Transportation under Secretary 
Elaine Chao, and after that I became Deputy Attorney General at the 
Department of Justice (``DOJ'') under William Barr. After Attorney 
General Barr's departure in December 2020, I became the Acting Attorney 
General, leading the Department until the end of the Trump 
Administration. My testimony today relates to my time as Acting 
Attorney General, and I appreciate this opportunity to discuss the 
actions taken by DOJ on January 6, 2021, to help restore order at the 
Capitol and enable the completion of Congress' certification of the 
2020 Electoral College vote.
                              introduction
    The events of January 6 were a national travesty and an intolerable 
attack on our representative democracy. To those who risked their 
safety to protect everyone at the Capitol: I honor your bravery. To the 
families of the Capitol Police officers who were injured that day or 
died in the wake of the attack: I extend my deepest sympathy. And to 
all of you and your staff who lived through that day: I share the 
justified anger at what the violent mob of attackers put you through.
    Although the storming of the Capitol was a tragic episode in our 
nation's history, I take some comfort in the resilience of our 
institutions in the face of such an attack, as demonstrated by 
Congress's ability to reconvene and fulfill its constitutional duties 
just hours after the breach. I am also proud of the efforts of DOJ, 
which urgently deployed more than 500 agents and officers from the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation (``FBI''); the Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco, and Firearms (``ATF''); and the US Marshals Service (``USMS'') 
to assist in restoring order at the Capitol. These outstanding men and 
women moved with urgency to assist the Capitol Police and others in the 
midst of an unprecedented security breach, and helped to clear and 
secure the hallowed epicenter of representative government.
    I am also proud of the swift action taken thereafter by DOJ 
personnel in the FBI and the DC US Attorney's Office to investigate and 
work to hold accountable those responsible for the disgraceful attack 
on the Capitol. As I said publicly on January 7, 2021: ``Yesterday, our 
Nation watched in disbelief as a mob breached the Capitol Building and 
required Federal and local law enforcement to help restore order. The 
Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that those responsible 
for this attack on our Government and the rule of law face the full 
consequences of their actions under the law. Our criminal prosecutors 
have been working throughout the night with special agents and 
investigators from the U.S. Capitol Police, FBI, ATF, Metropolitan 
Police Department and the public to gather the evidence, identify 
perpetrators, and charge Federal crimes where warranted. Some 
participants in yesterday's violence will be charged today, and we will 
continue to methodically assess evidence, charge crimes and make 
arrests in the coming days and weeks to ensure that those responsible 
are held accountable under the law.'' (attached as Ex. A).
    I appreciate the importance of today's oversight hearing, and I 
welcome the opportunity to share with you what I know about the January 
6 events in light of my prior roles at the DOJ. The Justice Department 
plays a special role in our government, and must be guided by our 
Constitution and the rule of law. I can tell you that is what guided 
me. My focus was consistently on following the rule of law and enabling 
the orderly transition of power in the manner contemplated in our 
Constitution and laws. Upon learning of the events at the Capitol on 
January 6, my priorities were threefold: securing the Capitol following 
the breach, supporting the Congress as it sought to fulfill its duty to 
certify the Electoral College vote, and beginning the critical work of 
holding accountable those who committed wrongful acts at the Capitol.
    I want to note as a threshold matter that there are some 
unavoidable limitations on the testimony I can provide today. For one, 
my access to information is limited because I am no longer with DOJ. 
Further, while the events of that day will be with me forever, my 
memory is unlikely to be perfect, as some aspects are seared in memory 
and others have become a blur. Moreover, I have only been authorized by 
DOJ to testify on certain topics, as I am bound to maintain certain 
information in confidence and must avoid making any statements that 
could interfere with the numerous ongoing investigations and 
prosecutions of individuals involved in the events of January 6. I 
appreciate your patience and understanding as to those, as I do my best 
to answer your questions.
                   i. doj actions prior to january 6
    On December 24, 2020, with the departure of William Barr, I became 
Acting Attorney General. During my tenure, DOJ maintained the position 
publicly announced previously that the Department had been presented 
with no evidence of widespread voter fraud at a scale sufficient to 
change the outcome of the 2020 election, that it would not participate 
in any campaign's or political party's legal challenges to the 
certification of the Electoral College votes, and that there would be 
an orderly and peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution. 
During my tenure, no special prosecutors were appointed, whether for 
election fraud or otherwise; no public statements were made questioning 
the election; no letters were sent to State officials seeking to 
overturn the election results; no DOJ court actions or filings were 
submitted seeking to overturn election results, and the only time DOJ 
did file a brief it was to seek a dismissal of Representative Gohmert's 
lawsuit aiming to decertify the electoral count--and that lawsuit was 
dismissed, as DOJ had urged.
    In the days and weeks leading up to Congress's January 6 vote to 
certify the results of the Electoral College, DOJ, FBI, and other law 
enforcement agencies learned that there would likely be rallies and 
protests in Washington D.C. on that day, including near the Ellipse and 
the US Capitol, among other possible locations. By itself, that was not 
unusual: the National Capital Region periodically and with some 
regularity hosts protests, rallies, and other demonstrations that can 
pose safety or security threats. The District of Columbia Metropolitan 
Police Department (``MPD''), Park Police, and Capitol Police are all 
experienced at dealing with such events. For example, they had dealt 
with protest disturbances related to the election results as recently 
as November and December 2020, and the Capitol Police (which are a part 
of the legislative branch) handled days of protests pledging to ``flood 
the Capitol'' during the nomination hearing of now-Justice Kavanaugh in 
October 2018.
    As you know, the police departments are not a part of DOJ, and DOJ 
does not have authority to control their activities. But as an 
investigative and prosecutorial agency, DOJ--primarily through the 
FBI--would normally focus on gathering intelligence about potential 
threats of violence and sharing information with police and Federal 
partner agencies about those threats, while the Department of Homeland 
Security (``DHS'') Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the police 
were likewise gathering available intelligence as well.
    From a leadership standpoint, my role was to ensure that the DOJ 
organization was appropriately fulfilling its functions. I fulfilled 
that obligation. Formal information coordination activities among DOJ, 
various police departments--including the Capitol Police and MPD--and 
various Federal agencies accelerated during the week of December 28. 
MPD initiated a Joint Operations Command Center. The FBI's Washington 
Field Office (``WFO'') set up a regular command post to share 
information among the FBI, ATF, DHS, and each of the various police 
organizations in the District (including the Capitol Police who are 
part of the legislative branch and report to Congress). And the 
District of Columbia US Attorney's Office arranged a number of 
conference calls to coordinate among local and Federal law enforcement. 
On January 5, the FBI took the added step of setting up a national 
coordination center at its Strategic Information and Operations Center 
(``SIOC''). Located at FBI headquarters, the SIOC was geared toward 
facilitating better coordination and sharing of information, among the 
Federal agencies, including DHS, the Department of the Interior 
(``DOI''), and the Department of Defense (``DOD''). Each of these 
Federal agencies supplied personnel to staff the SIOC 24/7 beginning on 
January 5 and 6, and continuing for a period thereafter. It was my 
understanding that the SIOC also coordinated closely with the WFO post, 
and thus the partners located there as well.
    I am aware that FBI Director Wray and Assistant Director Sanborn 
have testified publicly about the FBI's work regarding the events of 
January 6, and the work the FBI did, along with others, to gather 
intelligence about the planned events and the risk of violence. Based 
on the updates I received, I was confident that very substantial 
efforts were undertaken by DOJ personnel in advance of January 6 to 
understand and prepare for the potential threats, and share that 
information with law enforcement partners. During the week of December 
28, I received reports that MPD and others estimated that between 
10,000 and 30,000 people would be coming for the rallies or protests on 
January 6--a sizable, but not unprecedented number. Crowd size remained 
a continuing topic of conversation during the ensuing week, but, based 
on what was reported to me, projections did not materially change.
    As is generally the case with large protests or demonstrations in 
the National Capital Region, it was expected that experienced police 
departments like the Capitol Police, the Park Police, and MPD would 
bear responsibility for crowd control and security in their respective 
jurisdictions.\1\ The Department of Defense, which includes the Army 
National Guard, provided 340 personnel to assist MPD and placed others 
on standby. On January 4, MPD arrested the leader of the Proud Boys 
militia group for prior violent acts, and prosecutors obtained a 
judicial order barring him from the city on January 6. District of 
Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser wrote to Acting Defense Secretary Miller 
and me that MPD ``is prepared for this week's First Amendment 
Activities,'' and that other than the logistical support of unarmed 
members of the DC National Guard, DC ``has not requested personnel from 
any other Federal law enforcement agencies.'' (attached as Ex. B.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ In these types of situations, DOJ performs intelligence-
gathering, information-sharing, and after-the-fact investigation and 
prosecution where warranted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Nonetheless, although not specifically requested by MPD, Capitol 
Police, or any other agencies, my office directed various DOJ entities 
to take cautionary steps to alert or pre-position tactical teams if 
needed for support on January 6. For example, the FBI's Hostage Rescue 
team and Render Safe teams were activated; an additional FBI SWAT team 
from Baltimore was repositioned to Washington, DC.; ATF Special 
Response Teams were pre-positioned in Virginia for activation if 
needed; and USMS Special Operations Group personnel were also pre-
positioned in Virginia for deployment if needed.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ Additionally, as it was conceivable that some protesters might 
be unhappy with DOJ's not having filed court actions regarding the 
election outcome, DOJ arranged for tactical support from Bureau of 
Prisons personnel to supplement existing security at its own RFK 
Building.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I believe that DOJ reasonably prepared for contingencies ahead of 
January 6, understanding that there was considerable uncertainty as to 
how many people would arrive, who those people would be, and precisely 
what purposes they would pursue. Unlike the police, DOJ had no 
frontline role with respect to crowd control. The FBI, ATF, DEA, and 
U.S. Attorneys' offices, as investigative and prosecuting agencies, are 
generally not equipped for crowd control. But DOJ took appropriate 
precautions to have tactical support available if contingencies led to 
them being called upon.
                     ii. doj's actions on january 6
    The demonstrations and protests expected for January 6 had been a 
significant focus of attention for DOJ and FBI leadership in the week 
prior, and they continued to be so on the day of the events. On the 
morning of January 6, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General 
Richard Donoghue \3\ and I met with FBI leadership for the latest 
updates and preparation. I continued to talk to Principal Associate 
Deputy Attorney General Donoghue and FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich 
throughout the day and their proactive engagement and decisionmaking 
were simply invaluable.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ During this time, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General 
Donoghue was performing the functions of the Deputy Attorney General, 
due to my taking the position of Acting Attorney General.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the early afternoon, as President Trump was speaking to an 
audience at the Ellipse, I contacted the Acting US Attorney for the 
District of Columbia, Michael Sherwin, in part to inquire if the crowd 
size there was consistent with or larger than the forecasts. He was 
personally in the vicinity of the event and reported that the size of 
the crowd was on the lower side of the forecast and conceivably might 
have been below the lower end of the range. He also indicated that the 
crowd at the Ellipse did not appear to be violent or unruly.
    Reports after that conversation were more negative. ATF was 
notified of potential explosive devices having been placed at the 
Republican and Democratic National Committee offices. ATF promptly sent 
a team of experts to deal with the explosive devices, in coordination 
with the Capitol Police and MPD. Subsequently, I observed on television 
the events as the crowd moved from the Ellipse, up Constitution Avenue, 
and then to the US Capitol. During that time, I recall receiving 
updates from Acting US Attorney Sherwin and others.
    Sometime around 2 o'clock p.m., I was horrified and dismayed as I 
saw on television the crowd breaching the Capitol. I soon learned that 
ATF and FBI, among others, had just received requests for assistance 
from the Capitol Police and were beginning to respond. My office asked 
ATF, FBI, and the USMS to provide as much help as possible as quickly 
as possible, including deploying the pre-positioned resources. I also 
recall receiving phone calls from White House staff requesting that DOJ 
provide as much help as we could; I reported to them that we were doing 
so. I also received calls from multiple Members of Congress and staff, 
including members of leadership in both the House and Senate. I 
informed them that DOJ was sending help as quickly as possible. As I 
monitored the continuing events, I spoke multiple times with DOJ 
personnel who were onsite and coordinated with my counterparts across 
the Federal government.
    My understanding is that ATF had some personnel arrive to the 
Capitol very quickly, with sizable numbers following by 2:40 p.m. FBI 
personnel, including from the Hostage Rescue and SWAT teams, and 
personnel from the USMS Special Operations Group also deployed urgently 
to the Capitol. In total, more than 500 DOJ personnel surged to the 
Capitol to help clear the building and secure it so that the Congress 
could resume its business. It is my understanding that DHS likewise 
sent personnel from the Federal Protective Service and from Immigration 
and Customs Enforcement and that MPD and other local police departments 
also sent officers to assist the Capitol Police that afternoon.
    My original plan had been to go to the FBI SIOC for the afternoon, 
which was at the FBI headquarters just across the street from my 
office, but the urgency of the phone discussions and the need to 
coordinate with my DOJ staff in responding to the attack on the Capitol 
complex prevented my doing so. Instead, Principal Associate Deputy 
Attorney General Donoghue went to the SIOC and provided me with ongoing 
updates. As the attack continued, he and FBI Deputy Director Bowdich 
personally went to the Capitol building, to the Rotunda, and continued 
to provide me with situation reports from inside the building as 
efforts to restore order remained underway. I shared information with 
others and sometimes facilitated others talking directly with Principal 
Associate Deputy Attorney General Donoghue and Deputy Director Bowdich. 
I also took steps to let the public know where DOJ stood with respect 
to the attacks: I directed my staff to begin drafting a statement 
condemning the attacks. After internal review at DOJ, this statement 
was released later that same afternoon (attached as Ex. B).
    It is my understanding that by approximately 5 o'clock to 5:30 
p.m., the efforts at the Capitol to clear out the attackers had largely 
succeeded in doing so with the help of the more than 500 DOJ agents and 
officers who had deployed, but work remained, as those DOJ personnel 
were then working with the Capitol Police and others to check for 
explosives and to otherwise secure the offices and chambers in the 
Capitol building, so that Congress could return that same day and 
complete the electoral count.
    At 7 o'clock p.m., I, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General 
Donoghue, and others from DOJ participated in a conference call that 
included congressional leaders and representatives from DHS and DOD, as 
well as others. Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Donoghue 
provided a situation report, and congressional leaders wanted to know 
if it would be feasible for the Congress to return and complete its 
business that evening. Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General 
Donoghue told them he expected Congress could return by 8 o'clock p.m., 
which is what happened, with Vice President Pence reconvening the 
Senate at 8:06 p.m.
    Accordingly, Congress returned and completed its constitutional 
role in certifying the votes of the Electoral College that evening. 
With the achievement of the twin objectives of restoring order at the 
Capitol and enabling Congress to fulfill its electoral count obligation 
under the Constitution, I was and remain extremely appreciative for the 
work done that afternoon and into the night by the women and men of the 
FBI, ATF, and USMS, as well as others at the DC US Attorney's Office 
and elsewhere in DOJ. They, and all the others from DHS, DOD, DOI, and 
the various police departments who went to that Capitol that afternoon 
to help restore order, accomplished a vital feat for our country, and 
we owe them our deepest gratitude.
                   iii. doj's actions after january 6
    DOJ also immediately began work to ensure that those responsible 
for the attack on the Capitol would face the full consequences of their 
actions under the law. Acting US Attorney Sherwin and his team, along 
with the FBI and police counterparts, began charging participants in 
the violence as early as January 7. Within the first week after the 
attack, more than 70 individuals had been criminally charged, and DOJ 
had opened more than 170 investigations and gathered over 100,000 
digital tips.
    DOJ also sent the clear message that further violence would not be 
tolerated in the lead up to President-Elect Biden's inauguration. In a 
January 13 video message, I expressed DOJ's support for the exercise of 
constitutional rights but also strongly warned that ``I want to send a 
clear message to anyone contemplating violence, threats of violence, or 
other criminal conduct: We will have no tolerance whatsoever for any 
attempts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power on January 20th that 
our Constitution calls for . . . [t]he Department of Justice will seek 
to hold any violators accountable to the fullest extent of the law.''
    The work of investigating and prosecuting those who attacked the 
Capitol on January 6 continues to this day and is now in the capable 
hands of my former DOJ colleagues and the new DOJ leadership team. To 
avoid interfering in these ongoing matters, I must leave it to others 
to answer any questions regarding them as they deem appropriate.
                             iv. conclusion
    January 6 was a dark and harrowing day for America. And though I 
remain saddened by the events of that day, I am nonetheless grateful 
that physical harm to Members of Congress was avoided and that, because 
of the prompt work that was done to clear and secure the Capitol, 
Congress was able to complete its work that same evening. I am also 
proud of the role DOJ played in helping to restore order and all we 
were able to accomplish alongside our partners from various police 
forces, Federal departments and law enforcement agencies, and the 
National Guard.
    What the attackers did that day was terrible in its violence, the 
loss of life, and injuries suffered. But it was also terrible because 
it constituted an assault on a building that is a fundamental symbol of 
our democracy, on the institution of Congress itself, and on an 
electoral process required by our Constitution. As a society, we need 
to restore greater respect and appreciation for our Constitution, our 
representative democracy, and the rule of law. As I have said before, 
violence and senseless criminal conduct are not the right way to 
resolve differences or promote change in our country. And they will not 
carry the day.
    In closing, I would like to publicly thank my former DOJ colleagues 
and everyone who played a role in bringing order to chaos on January 6. 
I will leave it to others to assess why the security at the Capitol was 
not sufficient to protect the building that afternoon in the first 
instance, but the assistance that was provided after the breach 
occurred is something that deserves appreciation. I will also leave it 
to appropriate authorities to assess responsibility for what happened 
and determine any precipitating causes.
    Finally, if any valuable lesson could come out of the disturbing 
events from the Capitol riots, perhaps it might be that Americans of 
all backgrounds and political affiliations could agree that we cannot 
have anything like that happen again. Our Constitution, our traditions, 
and our ideals as a nation must be respected and revered. I know that 
all of you share that wish as well.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                                 
   Prepared Statement of Steven A. Engel, Former Assistant Attorney 
      General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice
                             June 15, 2022
    Good morning, Chairman Thompson, Vice Chairwoman Cheney, and 
Members of the committee. I appear this morning at the Committee's 
request, and I thank you for the opportunity to make an opening 
statement.
    Although the topics to be discussed involve Presidential 
communications and the deliberative processes within the executive 
branch, the U.S. Department of Justice has authorized me to provide 
testimony on the particular subjects identified by the Committee, and 
former President Trump previously authorized Department officials to 
discuss these matters with the committees of Congress. I will therefore 
seek to answer the Committee's questions to the best of my ability.
    I was privileged to serve as the Assistant Attorney General of the 
Office of Legal Counsel from November 2017 through January 2021. In 
that role, I served as the chief counsel to the Attorney General and 
the principal legal adviser to the executive branch. During that 
period, we sought to ensure that our legal advice would assist the 
President and his cabinet secretaries in discharging their 
responsibilities within the boundaries of the Constitution and laws of 
the United States, and in the interest of the people of the United 
States. Our commitment to that work remained the same both before and 
after the election of November 2020.
    Following the November 2020 election, in an effort to promote 
confidence in the election results, Attorney General Barr authorized 
the Department to review and, where appropriate, to investigate reports 
of fraud and irregularities as they came in. The Department's senior 
officials ultimately concluded that there was no evidence of widespread 
voter fraud on a scale sufficient to change the outcome of the 
election, and Attorney General Barr reported that publicly in early 
December.
    Although I was not personally responsible for these investigations, 
I did not doubt the judgment of the Attorney General and the 
Department's senior leadership. As a Presidential candidate, President 
Trump and his campaign had every right to pursue litigation in 
contesting the election results in the various Federal and State 
courts. But absent credible evidence of a violation of Federal law, the 
Department did not have any role to play in these election contests.
    This view was widely shared among the Department's senior 
leadership, including by Acting Attorney General Rosen. Yet we 
discovered in late December that one of the Assistant Attorneys 
General, Jeff Clark, took a different view. Mr. Clark believed that the 
Department should publicly assert that the election results had been 
marred by fraud and should urge several of the States to replace their 
previously certified electors. Mr. Clark's views came to the attention 
of President Trump, who considered whether Mr. Clark should replace the 
Acting Attorney General at the helm of the Department of Justice.
    The Department's senior leadership, as well as the White House 
Counsel, believed that Mr. Clark's plan lacked any factual or legal 
basis. On January 3, we met with the President and with Mr. Clark to 
explain why the Clark plan should not be pursued. We also made clear 
that the Department's leadership could not remain if the President 
chose to pursue that course. Following that discussion, President Trump 
agreed with us, and he retained Acting Attorney General Rosen through 
the end of his Administration.
    It was a great honor to serve at the Department of Justice, and I 
was privileged during my time to work with many lawyers of integrity 
and honor, including those sitting beside me today. The Department's 
leadership clearly understood our responsibility to ensure the neutral 
enforcement of the law, to protect our Constitution, and to assist in 
the peaceful transfer of power.
    Thank you for the opportunity to make this statement, and I will 
seek to answer the Committee's questions today to the best of my 
ability.

                                 [all]