“People tell me I should just get rid of both of you and make a change of leadership,” Donoghue recalled Trump saying to them. The only reason Clark wasn’t ultimately promoted was because several of the Justice Department’s top officials vowed to resign, according to testimony on Thursday from Donoghue, Rosen, and former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel. When asked why Trump wanted Clark, Rudy Guiliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, told committee investigators during a taped deposition that the thinking was “someone should be put in charge of the Justice Department who isn’t going to be frightened of what’s going to be done to their reputation” by working to toss out the election outcome. 3, 2021, the White House was already referring to him by that title, according to evidence the committee presented. Trump’s plan to install Clark in that role came close enough to fruition that by Jan. They argued that promoting Clark would ensure that the Justice Department would use its authority to question the election outcome. In December 2020, Trump and Clark pushed for the DOJ to send Georgia election officials a letter that falsely said the department had “identified significant concerns” that would throw the state’s election results into doubt.Īfter Donoghue and other high-ranking officials resisted Trump’s pressure, the former president and several Republican members of Congress mobilized a campaign to replace the current acting attorney general at the time, Jeff Rosen, with Clark. Much of the hearing centered on former Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark, whose efforts to exploit the nation’s top law enforcement agency to push baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud quickly brought him to Trump’s attention. Pardon Attorney Margaret Love told TIME the president could have issued pardons to members of Congress without ever publicizing them or even notifying the Justice Department. While no such pardons were ever revealed, it’s not clear whether Trump may have granted any of the lawmakers clemency in secret.
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