WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump hounded the Justice Department to pursue his false election fraud claims, striving in vain to enlist top law enforcement officials in his desperate bid to stay in power and relenting only when warned in the Oval Office of mass resignations, according to testimony Thursday to the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Three Trump-era Justice Department officials recounted persistent badgering from the president, including day after day of directives to chase baseless allegations that the election won by Democrat Joe Biden had been stolen. They said they swept aside each demand from Trump because there was no evidence of widespread fraud, then banded together when the president weighed whether to replace the department’s top lawyer with a lower-level official eager to help undo the results.
All the while, Republican loyalists in Congress trumpeted the president’s claims — and several later sought pardons from the White House after the effort failed and the Capitol was breached in a day of violence, the committee revealed Thursday.
The hearing, the fifth by the panel probing the assault on the Capitol, made clear that Trump’s sweeping pressure campaign targeted not only statewide election officials but also his own executive branch agencies. The witnesses solemnly described the constant contact from the president as an extraordinary breach of protocol, especially since the Justice Department has long cherished its independence from the White House and looked to steer clear of partisan considerations in investigative decisions.
“When you damage our fundamental institutions, it’s not easy to repair them,” said Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general in the final days of the Trump administration. “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.”
The hearing focused on a memorably tumultuous time at the department after the December 2020 departure of Attorney General William Barr, who drew Trump’s ire with his public proclamation that there was no evidence of fraud that could have changed the election results.
He was replaced by his top deputy, Rosen, who said that for a roughly two-week period after taking the job, he either met with or was called by Trump virtually every day. The common theme, he said, was “dissatisfaction that the Justice Department, in his view, had not done enough to investigate election fraud.”
Trump presented the department with an “arsenal of allegations,” none of them true, said Richard Donoghue, another top official who testified Thursday. Even so, Trump prodded the department at various points to seize voting machines, to appoint a special counsel to probe fraud claims and to simply declare the election corrupt.
The department did none of those things.
“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,” Donoghue said.
The testimony showed that Trump did, however, find a willing ally inside the department in the form of an environmental enforcement lawyer who’d become the leader of the agency’s civil division.
The attorney, Jeffrey Clark, had been introduced to Trump by a Republican congressman and postured himself as an eager advocate for election fraud claims. In a contentious Oval Office meeting on the night of Jan. 3, 2021, just three days before the insurrection, Trump even toyed with replacing Rosen with Clark but backed down amid warnings of mass resignations.
Clark’s name was referenced often Thursday, with Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican and committee member, deriding him as a lawyer whose sole qualification was his fealty to Trump and his willingness to do whatever the president wanted, “including overthrowing a free and fair democratic election.”
A lawyer for Clark did not return messages seeking comment.
Barely an hour before the hearing began, it was revealed that federal agents on Wednesday had searched Clark’s Virginia home,according to a person familiar with the matter. It was not clear what agents were seeking.
The latest hearing centered less on the violence at the Capitol than on the legal push by Trump to undo the election results, as the panel makes the case that the defeated president’s “big lie” over the election led to the insurrection. That included specific asks by Trump but also more general ones.
In one phone conversation, according to handwritten notes taken by Donoghue and highlighted at Thursday’s hearing, Trump directed Rosen to “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.”
Around that time, Trump was connected by a Republican congressman, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, to Clark, who’d joined the department in 2018 as its chief environmental lawyer and later set about aiding efforts to challenge the election results.
At one point, Clark presented colleagues with a draft letter pushing Georgia officials to convene a special legislative session on the election results. Clark wanted the letter sent, but Justice Department superiors refused.
Clark was not among the hearing witnesses. He earlier appeared in private before the committee, though lawmakers Thursday played a videotaped deposition showing him repeatedly invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination in response to questions.
Perry’s name surfaced later in the hearing, when the committee played videotaped statements from Trump aides saying he and several other Republican members of Congress sought pardons from the president that would shield them from criminal prosecution.
Perry and fellow GOP Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Louie Gohmert of Texas were all 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 statement Thursday having ever sought a pardon.
The situation came to a head on Jan. 3, 2021, a Sunday, when Clark informed Rosen that Trump wanted to replace him with Clark as acting attorney general. Rosen, resisting the idea of being fired by a subordinate, testified that he swiftly contacted senior Justice Department officials to rally them together. He also requested a White House meeting, where he and his allies could make their case.
That night, he showed up at the White House for what would be a dramatic, hours-long meeting centered on whether Trump should proceed with plans for a radical leadership change. Clark was present, as were Donoghue and Steven Engel, a Rosen ally and senior Justice Department official who also testified Thursday.
At the start of the meeting, Rosen said, “The president turned to me and he said: ‘The 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, and this other guy at least might do something.'”
Rosen told Trump he was correct, and said he wouldn’t let the Justice Department do anything to overturn the election.
Donoghue made clear he’d resign if Trump fired Rosen. Trump asked Engel whether he would do the same. Engel responded that, absolutely, he would. The entire leadership team would resign, Trump was told. Hundreds of staffers would walk out too.
Donoghue also sought to dissuade Trump from believing Clark had the legal background to do what the president wanted, saying Clark had “never tried a criminal case” or conducted a criminal investigation.
“He’s telling you that he’s 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,’” Donoghue said.
“It’s impossible,” he added, “it’s absurd, it’s not going to happen, and it’s going to fail.”
The president backed down. The night, and his Republican administration, ended with Rosen atop the Justice Department.
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Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.
For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege.
Takeaways: Trump risked provoking ‘constitutional crisis’
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee used Thursday’s hearing to show how Donald Trump tried to install a loyalist atop the Justice Department who would pursue his false claims of voter fraud and stop the certification of the 2020 election that Democrat Joe Biden won.
It’s the latest account of how perilously close the United States could have come to a constitutional crisis if the department leaders had not threatened to resign over the scheme and the defeated Trump had been able to orchestrate a plan for the U.S. government to overturn election results in several pivotal states.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., led the hearing, saying it would show “how close we came to losing it all.”
The committee investigating the causes of the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been trying to make the case that Trump’s efforts to reverse his loss resulted in the deadly siege after he sent supporters to the Capitol as Congress was certifying Biden’s victory. Here are some important takeaways from this month’s fifth hearing.
TRUMP’S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT IN TURMOIL
Day after day, Trump pressured the department leaders to dig into false claims of election fraud after the November 2020 election.
Former Attorney General William Barr had described the swirl of false voter fraud theories coming from Trump’s orbit as “wack-a-mole.”
The department declined Trump’s overtures because “we did not think they were appropriate,” testified Jeffrey Rosen, who became acting attorney general after Barr stepped down.
Over and over, the officials explained to Trump that the states conduct their own elections, free from federal interference. They tried to show him there was no voter fraud on a scale that could have tipped the election in his favor.
Trump, however, only pressed harder and started looking for alternatives.
At point in late December 2020, Trump asked what Rosen found to be a “peculiar” question: Do you know Jeff Clark?
Trump was eyeing Clark to take over at the department.
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WHO IS JEFF CLARK?
Clark led the civil division and particularly handled environmental cases. He was introduced to Trump by a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, a leader of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus.
Clark had been circulating a proposal that would have the legislatures from battleground states not certify their election results. It was similar to a plan from Trump lawyer John Eastman for alternative slates of electors loyal to Trump, rather than Biden, when Congress met Jan. 6, 2021, to certify results.
Clark’s ideas alarmed his colleagues, as did his sudden rise into Trump’s orbit as a potential new acting attorney general.
“It may well had spiraled us into a constitutional crisis,” testified Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general.
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‘WHAT DO I HAVE TO LOSE?’
During a meeting at the White House days before the riot, Justice Department leaders told Trump they would resign if he tried to install Clark and put his scheme in motion to reject electors.
Trump had called the officials to an unexpected Sunday meeting to lay out his plan. Donoghue described how he was dressed inappropriately in jeans, muddy boots and an Army shirt. Trump had him sit between Rosen and Clark. The president asked Donoghue: What if I replace Rosen with Clark?
“What have I got to lose?” Trump said, as Donoghue recalled.
Donoghue told Trump that the president would have everything to lose: mass resignations at the Justice Department, starting with those arrayed before him at the meeting.
Clark would be left to run a “graveyard” at the department, one of the officials said. Trump’s plan to reject the state electors with those loyal to Trump would never work. It was a “murder-suicide pact,” as his own White House counsel told him, they testified.
Donoghue made the point that “Jeff Clark wasn’t even competent to serve as attorney general.”
When Clark shot back that he had worked on complicated civil and environmental matters, Donoghue retorted: “How about you go back to your office and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill?”
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BLANKET PARDONS FOR JAN. 6 …
At least five Republican members of Congress, including Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who had connected Trump and Clark, sought pardons from the president that would shield them from criminal prosecution, according to testimony Thursday.
Perry and Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Louie Gohmert of Texas all had been involved in efforts to reject the electoral tally or submit “fake electors.” All sought pardons, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Hutchinson testified previously in video shown at the hearing.
Blanket pardons for all those involved in Jan. 6 were also discussed, according to another White House aide, John McEntee.
Gaetz tweeted that the hearing is a “political sideshow.”
Kinzinger said the only reason to ask for a pardon “is if you think you’ve committed a crime.”
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… AND SUBPOENAS SERVED ON ‘FAKE ELECTORS’
The hearing was gaveled in as the department escalated its own investigation, searching Clark’s Virginia home this week as federal agents also served subpoenas across the country related to the scheme by Trump allies to create sets of fake electors with the intention of invalidating Biden’s win.
The purpose of the searches was not immediately clear, but they came as the House committee has pressured the department to step up its investigation.
Among those being investigated are Republican officials in key states, including those working on the fake electors in the run-up to Jan. 6, when Congress would be tallying the election results.
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TRUMP VS. McCARTHY
Trump has decried the proceedings as a “witch hunt” and blamed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for declining to have Republicans on the committee who could defend Trump.
Trump recently told a conservative talk radio host that McCarthy, R-Calif., had made a “bad decision,” “very foolish decision,” by withdrawing the Republicans from the committee.
The only two Republicans on the committee are Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, both Trump critics.
McCarthy has stood by his choice not to seat Republicans after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rejected two of his choices because they had voted to decertify the results of the presidential election.
Rather than picking alternatives acceptable to Pelosi, McCarthy withdrew the others, refusing to play by Pelosi’s rules and trying to portray the the committee as unfair and illegitimate.
“I do not regret not appointing anybody at all,” McCarthy told reporters Thursday, saying he had said as much in a call with Trump. “The decision is right.”
__ Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.
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For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege