(New York) Donald Trump was “very agitated” on December 27, 2020. Sitting behind his desk at the White House, he refused to accept what the two most senior Justice Department officials were repeating to him for the umpteenth time. His claims of voter fraud were unfounded and the department could not “snap its fingers” to change the results of the presidential election.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
“He responded very quickly and said, in essence, ‘That’s not what I’m asking you to do, what I’m asking you to do, is to say there’s been corruption and to leave us, to me and to the Republican members of Congress, the rest, ”recalled Thursday Richard Donoghue, ex-acting number two of the Department of Justice.
At the fifth public hearing of the Jan. 6 Commission of Inquiry, Richard Donoghue and the other star witness of the day, Jeffrey Rosen, former acting U.S. Attorney General, offered several other examples of interactions where Donald Trump appeared to want to bribe the Department of Justice to stay in power.
“He was ready to sacrifice our republic to prolong his presidency. I can’t imagine a more dishonorable act on the part of a president,” said Illinois Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger, who played a leading role during the questioning of witnesses.
The meeting of December 27, 2020 obviously did not put an end to Donald Trump’s efforts. The next day, one of his allies in the Justice Department, Jeff Clark, an environmental lawyer, asked Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue to sign a letter to Georgia politicians. The missive falsely claimed that the Justice Department had “found significant issues” that would change the state’s election results.
Rosen and Donoghue refused to sign the letter.
For the department [de la Justice], inserting oneself in this way into the political process would have had, I think, serious consequences for the country. It could very well have led us into a constitutional crisis.
Richard Donoghue, former acting Justice Department number two
A few days later, Jeffrey Rosen learned that Donald Trump was preparing to replace him with Jeff Clark as acting United States Attorney General.
“I was not going to accept being fired by my subordinate,” Rosen said, recalling having immediately requested and obtained a meeting at the White House.
The objective of the meeting, on January 3, 2021: to divert the president from his idea. Clark attended, as did Donoghue and Justice Department legal counsel Steven Engel.
PHOTO BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Justice Department Legal Counsel Steven Engel
“What do I have to lose? “asked the president of the replacement of Jeffrey Rosen by Jeff Clark.
“Mr. President, you have a lot to lose,” Donoghue replied, referring in particular to the “mass resignations” that such a replacement would cause within the Department of Justice.
Steven Engel then intervened to say that Jeff Clark would run a “graveyard” if he was named head of the Department of Justice.
According to Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue, Engel’s intervention seemed to convince Trump that promoting Jeff Clark was a bad idea.
In the FBI’s line of sight
This same Clark is not only in the crosshairs of the Commission of Inquiry into January 6th. The FBI raided his home on Wednesday morning in connection with the creation of lists of fake voters after the 2020 presidential election. According to their promoters, these lists should have been used as a pretext for Mike Pence to refuse to certify the results of the ballot on January 6, 2021.
The Commission also heard depositions from former White House staffers citing several Republican representatives who sought preemptive presidential pardons after the attack on the Capitol.
Among these representatives are Matt Gaetz (Florida), Mo Brooks (Alabama), Andy Biggs (Arizona), Scott Perry (Pennsylvania) and Louie Gohmert (Texas).
The next Commission hearings are due to take place in July. They are supposed to focus on Donald Trump’s role in creating the climate of violence that led to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
At the end of the fifth hearing, Republican Representative from Wyoming Liz Cheney addressed members of her party: “Since the hearings began, you have heard from more than a dozen Republicans who told you what happened. actually happened in the weeks leading up to January 6. It can be hard to accept that President Trump abused your trust. That he cheated on you. Many will invent excuses to ignore this fact. But it is a fact. I wish that weren’t true. But it is. »