Trump hounded Justice Department officials 'virtually every day' to overthrow election, Jan. 6 panel hears

Donald Trump hounded the U.S. Justice Department to pursue his false election fraud claims, contacting the agency's leader "virtually every day" and striving in vain to enlist top law enforcement officials in a desperate bid to stay in power, according to testimony Thursday to the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill.

Three Trump-era Justice Department officials testified that Trump was fixated on voter fraud claims and insisted they pursue them despite being repeatedly told that none of the allegations had any merit.

"He had this arsenal of allegations," said Richard Donoghue, one top Justice official. "I went through them piece by piece to say, no, they were not true."

Another witness, Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general in the final days of the Trump administration, said he was called by Trump or met with him virtually every day from the time he ascended to the post in late December 2020. The common theme he said, was "dissatisfaction about what the Justice Department had done to investigate election fraud."

The hearing brought attention to a memorably turbulent stretch at the department as Trump in his final days in office sought to bend to his will a law-enforcement agency that has long cherished its independence from the White House. The testimony wasaimed at showing how Trump not only relied on outside advisers to press his election fraud claims but also tried to leverage the powers of federal executive branch agencies.

Clark's home searched

The scheme by Trump was a "brazen attempt" to use the Justice Department for his own political gain, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and chairof the committee.

Trump "didn't just want the Justice Department to investigate," Thompson said. "He wanted the Justice Department to help legitimate his lies, to basically call the election corrupt" and to appoint a special counsel.

The Justice Department resisted each demand.

Testimony also focused on a tense Oval Office showdown on Jan. 3, 2021, in which Trump contemplated replacing Rosen with a lower-level official, Jeffrey Clark, who wanted to champion Trump's bogus election fraud claims. Donoghue and another senior Justice Department official, Steven Engel, warned Trump that there would be mass resignations at the department if Trump followed through with his plan. Only then did Trump relent.

The night, and later his administration, ended with Rosen still in his job.

Clark's name was referenced early in the hearing, with Republican Rep. Adam Kinzingerderiding him as a lawyer whose sole qualification was his fealty to Trump. A lawyer for Clark did not return an email ahead of the hearing.

"Who is Jeff Clark?" Kinzinger asked rhetorically. "He would do whatever the president wanted him to do, including overthrowing a free and fair democratic election."

Barely an hour before the hearing began, it was revealed that federal agents this week searched Clark's Virginia home, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. A spokespersonfor the U.S. attorney confirmed the existence of law enforcement activity in Virginia, where Clark lives, but would not say what it was connected to.

WATCH |Committee has laid out coherent narrative: David Frum:

Trump had plan to overturn election 'first by fraud and then by violence': Frum

2 years ago

Duration 5:33

'[Trump] had a plan to overturn the election, first by fraud and then by violence,' said The Atlantic's David Frum on what the Jan. 6 committee hearings have revealed so far.

The hearing is the fifth this month by the committee investigating the run-up to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when Trump loyalists stormed the building as lawmakers were certifying the results of the election won by Joe Biden. Witnesses have included police officers attacked at the Capitol, as well as lawyers, a television executive and local election officials who all resisted demands to alter results in Trump's favour.

The committee last week presented videotaped depositions of former attorney general Bill Barr, who castigated Trump's fraud claims and resigned after failing to convince the president.

Thursday's hearing focused on what happened next as Rosen, Barr's top deputy, took over the department and found himself immediately besieged by Trump's demands for action.

In one phone conversation, according to handwritten notes taken by Donoghue and made public by lawmakers last year, Trump directedRosen to "Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen."

WATCH | Donoghue describes that moment:

Trump told U.S. Justice official: 'Just say it was corrupt'

2 years ago

Duration 0:42

Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, testified before the congressional committee examining the U.S. Capitol riot that President Donald Trump told him to 'just say [the 2020 election] was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.'

Requests for pardons

Around that time, Trump was introduced by a Republican congressman, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, to Clark, who'd joined the department in 2018 as its chief environmental lawyer and was later appointed to run its civil division. Clark has been subpoenaed by the committee but was not among the witnesses Thursday. Lawmakers on Thursday played a videotaped deposition showing him repeatedly invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Perry's name surfaced later in the hearing, when the committee played videotaped statements from Trump aides saying that he and several other Republican members of Congress sought pardons from the president that would shield them from criminal prosecution, the testimony revealed.

Perry and fellow Republican Reps. Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetzand Louie Gohmert of Texas all had been involved in efforts to reject the electoral tally or submit "fake electors." Gaetz tweeted Thursday that the hearing was a "political sideshow,"and Perry denied in a statementhaving ever sought a pardon.

Rosen recounts threatto fire him

The situation came to a head on Jan. 3, 2021, a Sunday, when Clark informed Rosen in a private meeting at the Justice Department that Trump wanted to replace him with Clark as acting attorney general. Rosen, according to the Senate report, responded that "there was no universe I could imagine in which that would ever happen" and that he would not accept being fired by a subordinate.

Rosen then contacted the White House to request a meeting. That night, Rosen, Donoghue and Engel, along with Clark, gathered with Trump and top White House lawyers for a contentious, hours-long Oval Office meeting about whether the president should follow through with his plans for a radical leadership change at the department.

According to testimony given by Rosen, Trump opened the meeting by saying, "One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren't going to do anything to overturn the election."

LISTEN | DidTrump break the law trying to stay in power?

Front Burner25:34The Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump

Donoghue and Engel made clear to Trump that they and large numbers of other Justice Department officials would resign if Trump fired Rosen. White House lawyers said the same. Pat Cipollone, then the White House counsel, said the letter that Clark wanted to send was a "murder-suicide pact."

"Steve Engel at one point said, 'Jeff Clark will be leading a graveyard. And what are you going to get done with a graveyard,' that there would be such an exodus of the leadership," Donoghue told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "So it was very strongly worded to the president that that would happen."

Donoghue also sought to dissuade Trump from believing that Clark had the legal background to do as the president wished since he was not a criminal prosecutor at the department.

"And he kind of retorted by saying, 'Well, I've done a lot of very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that,"' Donoghue said. "And I said, 'That's right. You're an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we'll call you when there's an oil spill."'