Contributors said the hearing will also discuss discussions at the White House over the appointment of a special attorney to investigate Trump’s allegations of election fraud, which arose at a heated Oval Office meeting in December. 2020 with Sidney Powell and Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael. Flynn.
Trump’s push began what was a tumultuous period in the Justice Department before January 6, 2021, when the then president considered replacing Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, then the department’s top energy lawyer who had pushed Trump’s fraud claims within the Justice Department. Department.
DOJ officials, along with lawyers from the White House Attorney’s Office, took part in a dramatic January 3, 2021, meeting at the Oval Office with Clark and Rosen present, where Trump finally retired. of his plan to install Clark as head of the Justice Department, after Rosen, Donoghue and Engel threatened to resign in protest.
According to a copy of his written statement that he will deliver to the hearing on Thursday, Rosen will state that the Justice Department did not receive any evidence of widespread election fraud.
“Some argued to the former president and the public that the election was corrupt and stolen. That view was wrong then and it is today, and I hope our presence here today will help reaffirm that fact,” Rosen said.
Thursday’s hearing is the committee’s fifth hearing this month to reveal the findings of its investigation, based on previous sessions that have focused on other aspects of Trump’s pressure campaign. It is also likely to be the last hearing of the month, with final hearings delayed until July.
The schedule is still fluid and subject to change, but a round of hearings in July is the committee’s current goal, select committee chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democratic congressman from Mississippi, said Wednesday.
Clark will be a major focus
The last two hearings of the committee on the pressure campaign against then-Vice President Mike Pence and state election officials have often focused on the efforts of Trump’s attorney, John Eastman, who played a key role in advancing theories. on how Trump could replace or reject the winning presidential voters. by Joe Biden.
On Thursday, Clark’s backstage efforts to help the Trump campaign subvert the election are likely to be the main focus.
Committee aides said the hearing would focus on the role Clark played within the Justice Department in pushing Trump’s false allegations of fraud. Clark had planned to “reverse the department’s investigation findings into election fraud,” according to committee aides, and wanted to send letters to states suggesting there had been fraud.
His push was quickly rejected by Rosen and Donoghue, prompting a confrontation at the Oval Office where Trump considered placing Clark at the head of the department.
While serving as head of civil cases in the Justice Department at the end of Trump’s presidency, Clark presented plans to support the Georgia and other states’ legislature to undermine the results of the popular vote. He gave credence to unfounded election fraud conspiracy theories, according to Justice Department documents, and contacted Trump about becoming attorney general, according to a Senate investigation he found this month.
The extent of Clark’s talks with Trump in the days leading up to January 6 is not yet publicly known.
Clark appeared before the committee for a statement in February and asked for the fifth, according to aides.
The chaos of the Justice Department has been previously examined
Last year, the Senate Judiciary Committee released an extensive report detailing how Trump had tried to use the Justice Department to advance his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Senate investigation included interviews with DOJ witnesses who will testify publicly on Thursday.
Committee aides on Jan. 6 said the panel’s investigation answers a different set of questions from the Senate’s inquiry, noting that in each of the committee’s previous hearings, there have been some parts of the story that have been known and some unknown.
The committee, for example, received text messages showing how former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was connected to Clark through Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry, CNN reported earlier. Perry was one of three people named in the Senate court report for further scrutiny, along with Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Doug Mastriano – now the Republican nominee for governor – and Trump’s legal adviser. Cleta Mitchell.
“As the events of January 6 are outside the immediate scope of the Committee’s investigation, this report is made available to the House Selective Committee on the January 6 attack, as well as to the public, to assist. to his investigation, “the Senate Judiciary Committee said. he wrote.
In addition to providing new details about how Perry was the link between Trump and Clark, text messages provided by Meadows and court documents have helped the House committee fill significant gaps in the key role the little-known Republican MP went exercise at almost all times. planning to reverse or delay the certification of the 2020 elections.
Kinzinger will lead Thursday’s hearing
Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger will be the committee member who will ask most of the questions during Thursday’s Justice Department-focused hearing.
That could mean the committee will provide more information on what it says is evidence that Republican lawmakers are asking for pardons from the Justice Department, including Perry.
The committee raised the pardons at its opening hearing. Perry later denied that he had apologized, calling it an “absolute shameless, soulless lie.”
On CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier this month, Kinzinger said more information would be released about the pardons in the audience he would direct.
Asked about Perry’s denial, Kinzinger said, “I don’t want to get my hands on it. We’ll post what we need. But we won’t make accusations or say things without evidence or supporting evidence. That.”
The former White House attorney remains a question mark
Along with Justice Department leaders, then-White House attorney Pat Cipollone played a major role in backing Trump’s efforts to install a loyalist in the Justice Department, and joined his threats to resign.
Cipollone, however, did not testify at Thursday’s hearing, and it is unclear whether he will do so at the commission’s hearings.
Thompson said he hopes Cipollone will testify at a public hearing, “but you know, it could happen, it couldn’t.”
When asked if the committee had a video testimony from Cipollone to play during a hearing in case he refuses to testify in public, Thompson said, “I’ll keep it for later.”
At Tuesday’s hearing, the committee’s vice president, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, called Cipollone, saying the panel was working to secure her testimony.
“The American people have not yet heard from Mr. Trump’s former White House attorney, Pat Cipollone. Our committee is confident that Donald Trump does not want Mr. Cipollone to testify here. In fact, the “Our evidence shows that Mr. Cipollone and his office tried to do the right thing. They tried to stop a series of President Trump ‘s plans for January 6,” Cheney said. “We believe that the American people deserve to hear Mr. Cipollone in person. He should appear before this committee and we are working to secure his testimony.”
However, Cipollone has been reluctant to offer public testimony, believing he has cooperated enough with the committee being for a closed-door interview, CNN reported Tuesday.
The hearing schedule is still a work in progress
Initially, Thursday’s hearing was scheduled to take place last Wednesday, but the commission adjourned it the day before.
The committee had initially said it would hold all of its hearings in June, but now the schedule is likely to be delayed in July.
There are at least two more hearings after Thursday that the committee previously set: one focused on the extremists who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 and another on what Trump was doing and not doing in response to the attack.
But with new information coming to the committee, attendees declined to say on Wednesday whether those would be the only remaining hearings or when they would be held, adding that the timeline of the hearings was being driven by the investigation.
In fact, committee members said they needed more time to review new documentary footage the panel received from documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who had never seen footage of Trump and his family. Thompson said he reviewed some of the images and described them as “important.”
“There’s been a deluge of new evidence since we started,” committee member Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said Wednesday. “And we just have to catch our breath, review the new evidence and then incorporate it into the hearings.”
CNN’s Evan Perez and Brian Rokus contributed to this report.