Gaetz, Brooks and other Republican lawmakers asked Trump for a pardon after Jan. 6
Excerpts from an email from U.S. Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL) to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows calling for pardons for members of Congress are shown on a screen during the fifth public hearing of the U.S. House Selective Committee to Investigate January 6 Attack on U.S. Capitol, Capitol Hill in Washington, USA, June 23, 2022.
Jim Bourg | Reuters
Several Republican members of the House of Representatives asked Trump for preventive pardons after the January 6 Capitol riot, including Reps Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks and Marjorie Taylor Greene, testified.
Alabama MP Brooks sent an email to the White House on January 11, 2021, asking for pardons for himself, Gaetz and “all congressmen and senators who voted to reject the polling station’s submission of Arizona and Pennsylvania “five days earlier, according to excerpts. of the message displayed during the hearing.
Florida Rep. Gaetz had pushed for a pardon beginning in December 2020, according to video-recorded testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
“The pardon he was asking for was as broad as it could be described, from the beginning of time, to the present day, for anything,” former White House attorney Eric Herschmann said in his own videotaped testimony. about Gaetz.
Others who asked for pardons were Trump allies such as representatives Louie Gohmert of Texas and Andy Biggs of Arizona, as well as Greene, Georgia’s controversial congressman, according to the witness.
They had all promoted and supported Trump’s false claims of having lost the 2020 presidential election only as a result of widespread electoral fraud.
After hearing testimony about the pardons, committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., Said, “The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you committed a crime.” .
– And manganese
Trump changed his mind about Clark after being warned of massive resignations from the DOJ
Former Attorney General of the Office of the Attorney General Steven Engel, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Acting Attorney General Richard Donoghue attend the fifth public hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee for to investigate the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. at Capitol Hill in Washington, USA, June 23, 2022.
Jim Bourg | Reuters
Witnesses testified that Trump, at a high-risk Oval Office meeting on January 3, 2021, withdrew the possibility of installing Clark as acting attorney general after being warned that ” hundreds “of DOJ officials could resign in a few days.
White House attorney Pat Cipollone said the draft of Clark’s letter to Georgia alleging election fraud was a “murder-suicide pact,” the former U.S. official recalled. Steven Engel Office of Legal Advice.
Engel told Trump that Clark would “lead a cemetery” if he were appointed, according to Donoghue. “This comment clearly had an impact on the president,” Donoghue said.
– Kevin Breuninger
Clark’s plans were “impossible,” “absurd,” “they won’t pass,” they will “fail,” Donoghue told Trump.
An animated recreation of a meeting between former President Donald Trump, Pat Cipollone, Steven Engel, Jeffery Clark, Richard Donoghue, Jeffery Rosen, Eric Herschmann and Pat Philbin is shown on a screen during the fifth hearing held by the Select Committee of Inquiry of January. Sixth attack on the United States Capitol on June 23, 2022 in the Cannon House office building in Washington, DC. The bipartisan committee, which has been collecting evidence related to the January 6, 2021 bombing of the U.S. Capitol for nearly a year, presents its findings in a series of televised hearings. On January 6, 2021, supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol building in an attempt to interrupt a Congressional vote to confirm Joe Biden’s election college victory. (Photo by Demetrius Freeman-Pool / Getty Images)
Demetrius Freeman | Getty Images
At a key Oval Office meeting on January 3, 2021, Donoghue said he told Trump that Clark could never keep his promise to quickly uncover widespread fraud if he was put in charge of the DOJ, in partly because he was not competent enough.
“You’re talking about putting in this seat a man who has never tried a criminal case, who has never conducted a criminal investigation, and he tells you that he will be in charge of the department, 115,000 employees, including the entire FBI. turn the premises into a penny and conduct nationwide research that will yield results in a matter of days? ” Donoghue asked.
“It’s impossible, it’s absurd, it won’t happen and it will fail,” Donoghue said.
“It won’t happen. It’s not competent,” Donoghue added.
– Kevin Breuninger
Leading DOJ officials agreed to resign if Trump installed Clark as acting attorney general
Former Attorney General of the Office of the Attorney General Steven Engel, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Acting Attorney General Richard Donoghue attend the fifth public hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee for to investigate the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. at Capitol Hill in Washington, USA, June 23, 2022.
Jim Bourg | Reuters
Assistant attorneys general promised to resign en masse if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark as acting attorney general, Donoghue said.
He asked top DOJ officials in a call to tell him what they would do if Clark was promoted. “They all essentially said they would leave. They would resign, en masse, if the president made that change in the direction of the department,” he said.
“Amazing,” Kinzinger replied.
– Kevin Breuninger
Trump’s chief of staff, Meadows, sent an “absurd” conspiracy video to acting AG Rosen
Representative Scott Perry, R-Pa., And members of the House Freedom Caucus hold a press conference to ask Attorney General William Barr to disclose the results of an investigation into allegations of 2020 election fraud, out of the Capitol on Thursday, December 3rd. 2020.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pal., Sent texts to then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, which included a link to a 20-minute YouTube video alleging baseless conspiracy theories about international electoral fraud.
“Why can’t we work only with the Italian government?” Perry sent a text message to Meadows, the committee demonstrated.
Meadows sent this link to Rosen, then the head of the DOJ. Rosen referred her to Donoghue, who called her “pure madness” and “patent absurd.”
– Kevin Breuninger
GOP leader McCarthy does not regret not nominating Republicans to panel despite Trump’s complaints
U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is chairing a press conference on the Save Our Sequoias Act at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, USA, on June 23, 2022.
Mary F. Calvert | Reuters
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said he has no regrets about not appointing any Republicans to the select committee, even though Trump did not.
McCarthy, R-Calif., Canceled all of his selections on the panel after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Blocked several of them.
“I don’t regret not naming anyone,” McCarthy said. “How can an honest investigation be done if the president can nominate and choose who he can be. How can the president select a president who voted to overturn the Republican presidential election?”
Trump has publicly and privately complained that the committee has no Republican members defending the former president. The only two GOP members, Wyoming MP Liz Cheney and Illinois MP Adam Kinzinger, are both opponents of Trump and voted in favor of a removal after the Capitol riot.
On Wednesday, Trump complained on his social media platform Truth Social: “Such tremendous lies and innuendo fences took place yesterday at the January 6 Unselect Committee.”
“You will never get the truth when you have biased and hateful witnesses who are allowed to go on and on without the slightest interrogation. Republicans should have representation !!” Trump wrote.
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Trump in the DOJ: “Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump delivered the keynote address to the Faith and Freedom Coalition during his annual “Road To Majority Policy” conference at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center on June 17, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Seth Herald | Getty Images
Trump had become more agitated by allegations of election fraud at a December 27, 2021 meeting with senior DOJ officials, where he was told the allegations had no merit, one of those officials said. .
Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue said Acting CEO Jeffrey Rosen told Trump that the DOJ could not and would not “snap its fingers” and change the outcome of the presidential election.
“He responded very quickly and basically said,‘ That’s not what I’m asking you to do, what I’m asking is to say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen. ’” Donoghue said Trump the he said.
Trump continued to pressure his allegations of electoral fraud on the oscillating states that Biden won, Donoghue said, adding that the then president argued that the DOJ had an obligation “to tell the people that it was of illegal corrupt elections “.
Although the DOJ found “isolated cases of fraud,” Donoghue said, “none of them came close to questioning the outcome of the election in any individual state.”
Trump “was adamant that he had won and that we weren’t doing our job.”
“I had this arsenal of complaints that I wanted to trust,” Donoghue said.
Donoghue said during the meeting he tried to make it clear to Trump “that these allegations simply had no merit … these allegations simply were not true.”
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Clark began conducting his own research, Donoghue says
An image of former Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Clark appears on a screen during the fifth hearing held by the select committee …