Representative Benny Thompson, chairman of the House of Representatives selection committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack on the left, swears by Richard Donohue, a former deputy attorney general on the right, Jeffrey Rosen, a former acting the U.S. Attorney General, and Stephen Engel, a former U.S. assistant attorney general for the attorney general’s office, during a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Doug Mills / The New York Times / Bloomberg / Getty Images / Pool
The commission’s last public hearing on Thursday (January 6th) shed considerable new light on former President Donald Trump’s attempts to arm the Justice Department in the last months of his term as part of his plot to cancel the 2020 elections and stay in power. .
The hearing began just hours after federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, one of the key Justice Department figures involved in Trump’s schemes. He denied committing any wrongdoing related to January 6th.
Three Trump appointees testified in person on Thursday, joining a growing list of Republicans who have vowed to provide degrading information about Trump’s post-election manipulation. Witnesses included former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy, Richard Donohue, and Stephen Engel, who headed the department’s Legal Advice Bureau.
Here are the conclusions from Thursday’s hearing:
In the context of the Oval Office meeting in December 2020: The hearing revived an important meeting in the Oval Office in December 2020, where Trump is considering the dismissal of the acting Attorney General and the appointment of Clark, who is ready to use the powers of federal law enforcement to encourage state lawmakers to undo Trump’s loss.
Entering these summer hearings, we already knew a lot about the meeting. But on Thursday, for the first time, we heard live testimony from some of the Justice Department officials who were in the room, including Rosen, the then Attorney General. (He survived the meeting after Trump was told he would resign en masse from the Justice Department if he replaced Rosen with Clark.)
Trump’s White House lawyer Eric Hershman said Clark was repeatedly “hit on the head” during the meeting. He told the commission he called Clark “devilish” and said his plans were illegal. He also said Clark’s plan to send letters to the states on the battlefield was “crazy.”
In a video statement released Thursday, Donohue said he gutted Clark’s powers during the meeting, explaining that Clark was grossly under-qualified to serve as attorney general.
“You are an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office and we will call you when there is an oil spill,” Donohue said in testimony, describing what he told Clark at the White House meeting.
Donohue said then-White House adviser Pat Chipolon called Clark’s plan a “murder and suicide pact.”
Donohue himself described Clark’s plan as “impossible” and “absurd.”
“This will never happen,” Donohue said of the plan. “And it will fail.”
Thanks to the repulsion of Rosen, Donohue, Hershman, Chipolone, and perhaps others, Trump failed to carry out his plan, which would put the country in unexplored waters and increase Trump’s chances of successfully carrying out his coup attempt.
A mitigating hearing included a vivid description of Trump’s campaign of pressure: Thursday’s trial included testimony from three lawyers who described behind-the-scenes events at the Department of Justice and the White House. It was a departure from Tuesday’s hearings and earlier hearings, which included emotional testimony from election officials and included shocking video montages of the Capitol massacre.
But even without the rhetorical fireworks, the content of the testimony was essential to understanding the breadth of Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election. Former Justice Department officials described what they saw and heard as Trump tried to attracted to help him stay in power – and how he tried to overthrow them when they refused to obey his orders.
The material was dense at times. Witnesses reconstructed White House meetings and telephone conversations with Trump. They were asked to break down their handwritten notes on some of these interactions – something you see more often at criminal trials and less often at hearings in Congress.
Yet the solid testimony of witnesses sheds new light on the events we have known about for more than a year. And the whole hearing evoked memories of the Nixon era, because it was about how the incumbent president tried to arm the powers of federal law enforcement to help his political campaign.
Read more key findings here.
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