Jan. 6 committee holds fifth hearing

Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, left, swears in Richard Donoghue, former acting deputy US attorney general, from right, Jeffrey Rosen, former acting US attorney general, and Steven Engel, former assistant US attorney general for the office of legal counsel, during a hearing in Washington, D.C on Thursday.

The Jan. 6 select committee’s latest public hearing on Thursday shed considerable new light on former President Donald Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department in the final months of his term as part of his plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power.

The hearing kicked off mere hours after federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, who was one of the key Justice Department figures who was involved in Trump’s schemes. He has denied any wrongdoing related to January 6.

Three Trump appointees testified in-person on Thursday, joining a growing list of Republicans who have gone under oath to provide damning information about Trump’s post-election shenanigans. The witnesses were former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, and Steven Engel, who led the department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Here are takeaways from Thursday’s hearing:

Inside a December 2020 Oval Office meeting: The hearing brought to life a high-stakes Oval Office meeting in December 2020, where Trump considered firing the acting attorney general and installing Clark, who was willing to use the powers of federal law enforcement to encourage state lawmakers to overturn Trump’s loss.

Going into 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-acting attorney general. (He survived the meeting, after Trump was told that there would be mass resignations at the Justice Department if he replaced Rosen with Clark.)

Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said Clark was repeatedly “clobbered over the head” during the meeting. He told the committee that he called Clark a “f—ing a–hole” and said his plans would’ve been illegal. He also said Clark’s plan to send letters to battleground states was “nuts.”

In videotaped testimony that was played Thursday, Donoghue said he eviscerated Clark’s credentials during the meeting, explaining that Clark was woefully underqualified to serve as attorney general.

“You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill,” Donoghue said in the deposition, describing what he told Clark at the White House meeting.

Donoghue said then-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone called Clark’s plan a “murder-suicide pact.”

Donoghue himself described Clark’s plan as “impossible” and “absurd.”

“It’s never going to happen,” Donoghue said of the plan. “And it’s going to fail.”

Thanks to the pushback from Rosen, Donoghue, Herschmann, Cipollone, and perhaps others, Trump didn’t follow through with his plan, which would’ve put the country in uncharted waters, and would have increased the chances of Trump successfully pulling off his coup attempt.

A toned-down hearing featured vivid description of Trump’s pressure campaign: Thursday’s proceedings featured testimony from three lawyers who described behind-the-scenes happenings at the Justice Department and White House. It was a departure from Tuesday’s and earlier hearings, which featured emotional testimony from election workers, and included jarring video montages of the carnage at the Capitol.

But even if there weren’t rhetorical fireworks, the substance of the testimony was essential to understanding the breadth of Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election. The former Justice Department officials described what they saw and heard as Trump tried to enlist them to help him stay in power — and how he tried to oust them when they refused to do his bidding.

The material was dense at times. The witnesses reconstructed White House meetings and phone calls with Trump. They were asked to dissect their handwritten notes of some of these interactions — which is something you more often see at criminal trials, and less commonly at a congressional hearing.

Still, the witnesses’ steady testimony shed new light on events that we’ve known about for more than a year. And the entire hearing evoked memories of the Nixon era, because it was all about how a sitting president tried to weaponize the powers of federal law enforcement to help his political campaign.

Read more key takeaways here.

Rep. Matt Gaetz speaks during the "Save America Summit" at the Trump National Doral golf resort on April 09, in Doral, Florida.

When asked for comment on the select committee testimony that said Rep. Matt Gaetz was among those who requested a pardon in connection to Jan 6, his office pointed CNN to a tweet from Gaetz that doesn’t mention pardons and instead just calls the committee a “political sideshow.” 

CNN again asked his spokesperson whether Gaetz ever requested a pardon, but the spokesperson did not respond. 

Rep. Mo Brooks addresses a "Save America" rally at York Family Farms on August 21, in Cullman, Alabama.

Meanwhile, GOP Rep. Mo Brooks texted a statement to CNN defending his pardon request, citing “concern Democrats would abuse the judicial system.”

“The email request says it all. There was a concern Democrats would abuse the judicial system by prosecuting and jailing Republicans who acted pursuant to their Constitutional or statutory duties under 3 USC 15,” Brooks wrote. “Fortunately, with time passage, more rational forces took over and no one was persecuted for performing their lawful duties, which means a pardon was unnecessary after all.”

Some background: Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson said of the Jan. 6 committee’s revelation about the list of GOP lawmakers who sought presidential pardons before former President Donald Trump left office, “I think the important thing is the fact that you only ask for a pardon, when you think you’ve done something wrong.” 

“So if those individuals who we offered today, feel that they were doing something wrong and deserve a pardon, that tends to verify that what the President was promoting, and what other people were promoting around whether or not the elections were legitimate or not, obviously, it says that they thought they were doing something wrong” Thompson added.

Steven Engel, former assistant general for the office of legal counsel, Jeffrey A. Rosen, former acting attorney general, and Richard Donoghue, former acting deputy attorney general, are sworn in during the fifth hearing on June 23.

The Jan. 6 committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol just wrapped up its fifth hearing of the month.

The committee heard from a panel of former top Justice Department officials: Jeffrey A. Rosen, the former acting attorney general; Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general; and Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel.

Much of the hearing was centered around Jeffery Clark, then the department’s top energy lawyer. Clark pushed Trump’s fraud claims inside the Justice Department and Trump considered putting Clark in charge.

Here are the top headlines you might have missed:

The House Jan. 6 select committee’s fifth hearing of the month just wrapped up. 

The panel focused on former President Donald Trump’s attempt to use the Justice Department to back his election disinformation.

What happens next: The committee is now preparing to delay its next round of hearings into July, Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson said Wednesday.

The schedule is still fluid and is subject to change, but a round of hearings in July is the current goal. The House is scheduled to be in recess until the week of July 11, so Thompson said it is likely the hearings will not resume until “after the recess.”

An image of former President Donald Trump phoning into a Fox News interview is shown on a screen during Thursday's U.S. House Select Committee hearing in Washington, D.C.

Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and other congressional Republicans sought pardons from then-President Donald Trump after the 2020 election, according to emails and testimony revealed by the Jan. 6 House select committee on Thursday.

The committee showed an email that Brooks sent to the White House on Jan. 11, 2021, with the subject line of “pardons.” 

Former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said that Gaetz requested a pardon. “The general tone was, we may get prosecuted because we were defensive of, you know, the president’s positions on these things,” Herschmann said.  

“The pardon that he was discussing, requesting, was as broad as you could describe,” Herschmann said.

John McEntee, another Trump aide, told the committee in a deposition interview played at Thursday’s hearing that Gaetz had told him he’d asked for a pardon. “He told me he’d asked Meadows for a pardon,” McEntee said.

McEntee added that he also heard discussions about a blanket pardon. “I had heard that mentioned,” he said.  

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testifies in a pre-recorded video shown during the hearing on Thursday.

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, said at a Dec. 21, 2020, White House meeting there were congressional Republicans who were “advocates” for pardons.

Hutchinson also testified that Perry, who played a key role connecting DOJ official Jeffrey Clark to Trump, had sought a pardon, as well as Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Louie Gohmert of Texas.

Asked by committee investigators if Perry asked for a pardon to Hutchinson directly, she said, “Yes, he did.”  

Hutchinson also testified that she had heard Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had “asked for a pardon from (deputy White House counsel Patrick) Philbin,” but that she said she didn’t hear it directly.

Rep. Jim Jordan, Hutchinson said, had not asked for a pardon but “more for an update on whether the White House was going to pardon members of Congress.” 

“Mr. Gohmert asked for one as well,” Hutchinson said.

Jeffrey A. Rosen, former acting Attorney General, listens as Richard Donoghue, former Acting Deputy Attorney General, testifies before the House select committee hearing on June 23.

Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue said he didn’t mince words with former President Trump during a meeting in which replacing acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark was discussed.

Clark is a former DOJ lawyer who pushed Trump’s fraud claims inside the Justice Department.

“Early on, the President said, ‘what do I have to lose?’ And it was actually a good opening, because I said ‘Mr. President, you have a great deal to lose,’” Donoghue said at the Jan. 6 House select committee hearing.  

“I began to explain to him what he had to lose, and what the country had to lose, and what the department had to lose. This was not in anyone’s best interest. That conversation went on for some time. … At some point, the conversation turned to whether Jeff Clark was even qualified, competent to run the Justice Department, which in my mind he clearly was not,” he said.  

Donoghue called it a “heated conversation.”

Donoghue said that Clark would not even be recognized by FBI Director Chris Wray if he went into his office.

“Do you think that the FBI is going to start suddenly following his orders? It’s not going to happen. He’s not competent,” he said.

Clark defended himself by saying he was involved in civil and environmental litigation.

“And I pointed out yes, he was an environmental lawyer and I didn’t think that was an appropriate background to be running the United States Justice Department,” Donoghue said.

No one else in the room supported Clark, he said.

Richard Donoghue, former acting deputy attorney general, said that he set up a meeting with assistant attorney generals at the Department of Justice, where he asked them what they would do if Jeffrey Clark was made head of the department by former President Donald Trump.

Donoghue said that, essentially, those who participated in the meeting “said they would resign en masse if the President made that change to the department leadership.”

During his testimony, Donoghue also noted several times how he felt Clark was unqualified to lead the department.

Some background: Clark is the former DOJ lawyer who former President Donald Trump sought to install as attorney general in the days before the January 6 Capitol riot. He was at the center of an effort by Trump to get the Justice Department to falsely claim there was enough voter fraud in Georgia and other states that he lost, in a last-minute bid to help sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory and pave the way for him to remain in power.

Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen testifies during the fifth public hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee on Thursday, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

Jeffrey A. Rosen, the former acting attorney general, said he told then-President Donald Trump at a pivotal meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 3, 2021, that he would not allow the Justice Department to do anything to give validity to false claims of election fraud, saying its “a good thing for the country.”

When he entered the meeting, Trump said “you don’t even agree with the claims of election fraud, and this other guy at least might do something,” Rosen testified, referring to Trump considering installing Jeffrey Clark, the department’s former top energy lawyer who had pushed Trump’s fraud claims.

“So that’s the right answer and a good thing for the country, and therefore, I submit it’s the right thing for you, Mr. President,” Rosen added.

He said Trump and other Justice Department and White House officials in the room were bringing up points in support of Rosen and critical of Clark.

A video of retired CIA chief of station Bradley Johnson is shown on screen during the fifth hearing held by the House select committee on June 23.

At the request of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, then-Defense Secretary Christopher Miller reached out to the defense attaché in Italy to investigate a baseless claim that an Italian satellite had switched votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, according to testimony at Thursday’s House Jan. 6 committee hearing.

The conspiracy theory, which CNN has previously reported was among those pushed Meadows pushed top national security officials to investigate, was characterized as “pure insanity” by former DOJ official Richard Donoghue, who was also asked to look into the claim.

After the DOJ refused to meet with the man who was pushing the baseless claim online, Meadows went to Department of Defense and asked Miller to follow-up on it.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger said Thursday that the committee confirmed a call was actually placed by Miller to the attaché in Italy to investigate the claim about Italian satellites. 

Jeffrey Rosen, former acting US attorney general, speaks during a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

Former President Trump asked then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen to seize voting machines from state governments in late December 2020, according to testimony from former DOJ official Richard Donoghue during Thursday’s hearing — a request Rosen testified the Justice Department had no legal authority to do.

“I don’t think there was legal authority either,” Rosen added, responding to question from Rep. Adam Kinzinger that there was no “factual basis” to seize the machines.

Richard Donoghue, former acting deputy attorney general, said that Trump was “very agitated” when he was told the Justice Department would not take action of the voting machines.

At that point, according to Donoghue, Trump called Ken Cuccinelli at the Department of Homeland Security and told him that Rosen was saying it was DHS’s job to seize the machines, even though he was not saying that. 

“Get Ken Cuccinelli on the phone,” Trump yelled to his secretary after DOJ officials told him that DHS had expertise in voting machines and determined there was nothing to warrant seizing them, according to former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, who testified Thursday. 

Rosen confirmed Thursday he never told Trump that DHS could seize voting machines. CNN has previously reported that Trump pushed DOJ and DHS to seize voting machines. 

CNN has also previously reported that Trump allies drafted executive orders that would have had the military and DHS seize voting machines had they been signed by Trump – but they ultimately were not. 

CNN’s Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.

There was no legal basis to appoint a Justice Department special counsel to investigate voter fraud in 2020, even though President Donald Trump demanded it, a top department official testifiThursday.

Steven Engel, who was the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the executive branch, described the saga in testimony to the Jan. 6 select committee.

CNN and other news outlets reported in December 2020 that Trump had floated the idea of naming Sidney Powell as a special counsel, but that was met with significant pushback from senior White House officials. Powell is a well-known conspiracy theorist who represented former Trump adviser Michael Flynn during his criminal trial, and has promoted fantastical and false theories of massive voter fraud.

The committee played a deposition clip of Powell describing Trump’s desire to appoint her to the post.

“He asked me to be special counsel to address the election issues and to collect evidence and he was extremely frustrated with the lack of, I would call it law enforcement, by any of the government agencies that are supposed to act to protect the rule of law in our republic,” she said in the video.

Then-Attorney General Bill Barr refused to appoint a special counsel, and after Barr resigned in December 2020, Trump continued pressing top Justice Department officials to name a special counsel, including Barr’s successor, Jeffrey Rosen, who also refused.

“Neither Barr nor Rosen believed (a special counsel) was appropriate or necessary in this case,” Engel said.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, who has been leading much of the questioning on Thursday, condemned Trump for even considering a special counsel.

“An investigation led by a special counsel would just create an illusion of legitimacy and fake cover for those who want to object” to the 2020 election, “including those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6,” he said.

Richard Donoghue, former acting Deputy Attorney General, testifies before the House select committee on June 23.

Former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue recounted having multiple confrontations with DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, telling him that what he was proposing, in pushing election fraud claims, was “nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election.” 

Donoghue later confronted Clark again, and the top tier of DOJ officials continued to try to put an end to Clark’s insistence that the department be used to investigate nonexistent voter fraud. Another confrontation was on January 2, 2021, Donoghue said. 

“He was defensive,” Donoghue said. “Similar to his earlier reaction when I said this was nothing less than the Justice Department meddling in an election, his reaction was, ‘I think a lot of people meddled in this election.’ So he kind of clung to that.” 

According to the House select committee, a lawyer named Ken Klukowski joined the Justice Department in mid-December 2020 and helped draft a letter urging Georgia state officials to take actions that would undermine the results of the election in the state as well as pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election. 

Klukowski joined the Department of Justice “on Dec. 15 with only 36 days left until inauguration,” Vice Chair Liz Cheney said Thursday. “He was specifically assigned to work under Jeffrey Clark.” 

According to Cheney, Klukowski helped draft a letter to Georgia state officials with Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, repeating false claims of election fraud and asking the officials to convene a special session and consider approving a new slate of electors for the state. 

Klukowski also worked with conservative lawyer John Eastman, who helmed the false theory that Pence could overturn the 2020 election results and was recommended in a December 2020 email to meet with Pence and his staff, Cheney said.

“This email suggests that Mr. Klukowski was simultaneously working with Jeffrey Clark to draft the proposed letter to Georgia officials to overturn their certified election,” Cheney said, “and working with Dr. Eastman to help pressure the vice president to overturn the election.”

Steven Engel, former assistant general for the office of legal counsel, testifies during Thursday's hearing.

Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel, is testifying before the Jan. 6 House select committee.

The committee is focusing on former President Trump’s effort to pressure the Justice Department to challenge the election result.

Engel was a key witness at a pivotal meeting on Jan. 3, 2021, at the White House where Trump held a reality TV-show style contest over whether to fire acting attorney general Jeffery Rosen and install someone more amenable to run the Justice Department to support his election fraud claims. Rosen replaced former Attorney General William Barr.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, in an earlier investigation, found Engel told Trump at the meeting that he and other top officials would resign if he fired Rosen.

Some context: In a series of emails released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee earlier this month, Richard Donoghue, the former deputy attorney general, told Engel that he wanted to meet with him “about some antics that could potentially end up on your radar,” signaling there was at least some concern that the Office of Legal Counsel would have to weigh in on potential issues.

The emails also included correspondence with Jeffery Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who tried to convince Trump to remove Rosen and use the DOJ to undo Georgia’s election results, which The New York Times reported in January. In the Jan. 1 email, Meadows asked Rosen to have Clark look into the alleged signature issues in Georgia, ahead of a meeting on Jan. 3 in which Trump heard directly from Clark and Rosen before ultimately choosing not to remove Rosen.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is back after taking a short break. 

During the break, Rep. Bennie Thompson told CNN that the committee hasn’t decided how far to go to secure the testimony of Rep. Scott Perry, who has so far refused to comply with the committee’s subpoena.

“Well, you know, we’ve asked him to come. We will make a decision at some point on the next step,” the committee chairman said. Asked if he personally favored holding Perry in contempt, Thompson said, “Well, I would leave it up to the committee.”

Asked if he believed Perry had any criminal exposure, Thompson said, “Well, I think he was reporting — recommending somebody for a job. He recommended somebody that was not qualified. That’s up to him.”

Steven Engel, former assistant general for the office of legal counsel, from left, Jeffrey A. Rosen, former acting Attorney General, and Richard Donoghue, former acting Deputy Attorney General, are sworn in to testify as the House select committee on Thursday.

The Jan. 6 committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol is taking a break.

The committee is focusing on how former President Donald Trump tried to use the Justice Department to bolster his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

So far, the committee heard live testimony from three top officials who led the Justice Department in the final days of the Trump administration. They testified about how the then-President implemented a pressure campaign to give baseless fraud allegations credibility and how Trump considered replacing the acting attorney general with an official more receptive to his false claims.

Here’s who was on the panel:

The committee is also focusing on the role of Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ lawyer who pushed Trump’s fraud claims inside the Justice Department. Clark himself is not testifying, but the committee is presenting evidence that showed how that push was rejected by Rosen and Donoghue, which led to Trump considering putting Clark in charge of the department.

Here are the key moments so far:

The Jan. 6 committee is taking a short break. 

Former President Trump's attorney Rudy Guliani is shown in a pre-recorded video on Thursday during the hearing.

While Rep. Adam Kinzinger was questioning former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, the Jan. 6 House select committee showed video of a deposition with former President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani discussing the type of individual they were looking for to head the Justice Department.

In the video, Giuliani was asked:

In the hearing, Kinzinger asked Donoghue: “When you told the president that you wouldn’t pursue baseless claims of fraud, was it because you were worried about your reputation?”  

“No, not at all,” he answered.

US Rep. Scott Perry pushed for then-Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark to take over the department during meetings at the White House in late December 2020 and early January 2021, according to taped testimony by a former aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows played during Thursday’s House Jan. 6 committee hearing. 

“He wanted Mr. Clark – Mr. Jeff Clark to take over the Department of Justice,” Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Meadows aide, says about Perry in the clip. 

Hutchinson’s testimony underscores how Perry acted as a conduit between Clark and former President Donald Trump as he sought to enlist the Justice Department in his bid to overturn the 2020 election. 

In an April court filing, the committee released text messages between Meadows and Perry showing that a plan was taking shape to overhaul DOJ leadership. 

CNN has also previously reported on Perry’s role in efforts to install Clark as attorney general – which Trump nearly did in the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. 

Former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue testified Thursday that, during the presidential transition, Donald Trump told him and another top Justice Department official that they should “just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” 

Last summer, CNN reported about Trump’s comments. They surfaced during a previous congressional inquiry into the former president’s dealings with the Justice Department during the final months of his presidency. Donoghue cooperated with that investigation and provided a copy of his handwritten notes, which captured Trump’s comments. 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, said during Thursday’s hearing that the comment demonstrated how Trump was trying to abuse and weaponize the Justice Department to cling onto power, after losing the 2020 election. 

“The President wanted the top Justice Department officials to declare that the election was corrupt, even though, as he knew, there was absolutely no evidence to support that statement,” Kinzinger said. 

Richard Donoghue, former acting attorney general, said he took handwritten notes during a 90-minute conversation with former President Trump after he made a fraud allegation he “had not heard” before.

He continued, “So, I simply reached out and grabbed a notepad off my wife’s nightstand and a pen I started jotting it down. That had to do with an allegation that more than 200,000 votes were certified in the state of Pennsylvania that were not actually cast. Sometimes, the President would say it was 205, sometimes he would say it was 250, but I had not heard this before. And I wanted to get the allegation down clearly so he could look into it if appropriate. And that is why started taking those notes and then as conversation continued, I continued to take the notes.”  

Watch moment here:

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Former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said that over roughly 12 days in late December 2020 and early January 2021, former President Trump contacted him nearly every single day to voice his displeasure with the Department of Justice.

While the communication was mainly about his dissatisfaction with the DOJ, Trump also brought up a number of other requests.

“The common element of all of this was the President expressing his dissatisfaction that the Justice Department, in his view, had not done enough to investigate election fraud. But at different junctures, other topics came up at different intervals. So, at one point, he had raised the question of having a special counsel for election fraud. At a number of points, he raised requests that I meet with his campaign counsel, Mr. [Rudy] Giuliani. At one point, he raised whether the Justice Department would file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court,” he said.

“At a couple of junctures, there were questions about making public statements or about holding a press conference. At one of the later junctures was this issue of sending a letter to state legislatures in Georgia or other states,” he continued.

Rosen added even before he had officially become acting attorney general on Dec. 23, the President had asked Rosen and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, to go to the White House to meet with him.

Rosen’s testimony underscored the intensity of Trump’s pressure campaign as he attempted to enlist the Justice Department to aid in his efforts to overturn the election. 

The DOJ declined all those requests because “we did not think that they were appropriate based on the facts and the law as we understood them,” Rosen said.  

CNN’s Jeremy Herb contributed to this post.

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Former Attorney General Bill Bar told the House select committee that he authorized the Justice Department to investigate election fraud in 2020 because if he didn’t, he wasn’t “sure we would have a transition at all.”

Barr added, “I sort of shudder to think what the situation would have been if the position of the department was ‘we’re not even looking at this until after Biden’s in office.’ I’m not sure we would have had a transition at all.”

Throughout its hearings, the committee has repeatedly played clips of Barr saying there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Barr publicly stated that DOJ had found no evidence of fraud in December 2020, and resigned as attorney general just a few weeks later.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger speaks during a hearing of the House select committee on June 23.

After emphasizing that Justice Department leaders must operate without being influenced by inappropriate political pressure from the President, committee member GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger said “President Trump did find one candidate at Justice who seemed willing to do anything to help him stay in power.”

Kinzinger went on to describe former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark as someone who would do whatever Trump wanted, “including overthrowing a free and a fair democratic election.”

Clark is the former DOJ lawyer who Trump sought to install as attorney general in the days before the January 6 Capitol riot as top officials refused to go along with his vote fraud claims.

He was at the center of an effort by Trump to get the Justice Department to falsely claim there was enough voter fraud in Georgia and other states that he lost, in a last-minute bid to help sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory and pave the way for him to remain in power.

Federal investigators conducted a search Wednesday of the home of Clark, sources briefed on the matter told CNN.  

CNN’s Evan Perez contributed reporting.

Richard Donoghue, former deputy attorney general, testifies before the House select committee on Thursday.

Richard Donoghue, former deputy attorney general, is now testifying before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Donoghue has previously spoken with the committee behind closed doors, along with former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, about former President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against top Justice Department officials to investigate baseless claims of election fraud prior to Jan. 6, 2021.

Top Justice Department and White House officials eviscerated Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark during a high-stakes Oval Office meeting in early January 2021, where then-President Donald Trump considered installing Clark as attorney general so he could use the powers of the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election.

“I made the point that Jeff Clark is not even competent to serve as the attorney general. He’s never been a criminal attorney. He’s never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. He’s never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial jury,” former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue said in a video deposition clip that was played Thursday, recalling what he told Trump during the critical Oval Office meeting.

Donoghue said he told Clark, “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.”

Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said Clark was repeatedly “clobbered over the head” during the meeting. He said that he explicitly told Clark that he was breaking the law, according to his videotaped deposition with the committee, a clip of which was played on Thursday.

“f*cking a-hole, congratulations, you just admitted your first step or act you would take as attorney general would be committing a felony,” Herschmann said.

Herschmann later testified that he thought Clark’s plan was “nuts” and told the panel that he told Clark, “the best I can tell is the only thing you know about environmental and election challenges it they both start with E. And based on your answers tonight, I’m not even certain you know that.” 

According to Donoghue, then-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said during the meeting that Clark’s plan to send letters to battleground states, encouraging them to interfere with the election results, was a “murder-suicide pact.” 

During the Oval Office meeting, these officials pummeled Clark’s ideas, even as he kept trying to explain to Trump that he would uncover widespread fraud if he was put in charge of the Justice Department. These officials successfully persuaded Trump to back away from the plan to fire then-Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and promote Clark.

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger outlined the goal of today’s Jan. 6 House select committee hearing: “Today, President Trump’s total disregard for the Constitution and his oath will be fully exposed.”

Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the committee, also made an appeal to both sides of the aisle.

Watch:

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White House lawyer under former President Donald Trump, Eric Herschmann, is displayed on a screen during the House select committee hearing on June 23.

White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the committee he reacted so strongly to top DOJ official Jeffrey Clark’s plans to use the department to investigate former President Donald Trump’s election lies that Herschmann called him a “f*cking a-hole” who was proposing to violate the law if he became attorney general.

“When he finished discussing what he planned on doing, I said, good f*cking a-hole, congratulations, you just admitted your first step or act you would take as attorney general would be committing a felony” by violating grand jury secrecy rules, Herschmann said in a videotaped deposition played during Thursday’s hearing. “You’re clearly the right candidate for this job,” Herschmann said.

The comments from Herschmann — who’s become one of the most colorful commentators whose quips the committee keeps showing — were presented near the start of Thursday’s public hearing, about how Clark from within DOJ sought to help Trump challenge the 2020 election.

The committee did not provide additional context about what Clark had proposed to elicit Herschmann’s sarcasm, but the exchange came as Clark was making a run at becoming Trump’s acting attorney general.

Other top White House and Justice officials in the room with Clark opposed him taking over the department. They told Trump that if he had installed Clark, there would be mass resignations across DOJ. 

Committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney said a key focus of the hearing today will be a draft letter written by Jeffrey Clark, then the department’s top energy lawyer who had pushed Trump’s fraud claims.

The letter was intended to be sent to the Georgia state legislature, Cheney said, adding other versions of the letter would also go to other states despite Clark having any evidence of the election fraud he was claiming.

“But they were quite aware of what Mr. Trump wanted the department to do,” Cheney said.

The draft of the letter, as shown by the committee, claims the Department of Justice investigations have “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the State of Georgia.”

The letter recommended Georgia convene a special session and consider approving a new slate of electors.

In addition to Clark’s signature, there was also a place for the acting attorney general and the acting deputy attorney general to sign, according to exhibits shown by the committee.

Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general at the time, and Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general, refused to sign the letter, Cheney said.

Both Rosen and Donoghue are testifying at the hearing on Thursday.

“This would be a grave step for the department to take,” Donoghue wrote when he saw the letter, according to Cheney.

“Jeff Clark met privately with President Trump and others in the White House and agreed to assist the President without telling the senior leadership in the department who oversaw him,” Cheney said.

Some background: Trump’s push to get the Justice Department to verify his false election claims began what was a tumultuous period at the department in the lead-up to Jan. 6, 2021. When Rosen and Donoghue resisted these pushes from Trump and his allies, the then-President considered replacing Rosen with Clark.

The DOJ officials, along with lawyers in the White House counsel’s office, took part in a dramatic Jan. 3, 2021, meeting in the Oval Office with Clark and Rosen present, where Trump ultimately backed away from his plan to install Clark as the head of the Justice Department — after Rosen, Donoghue and Engel had threatened to resign in protest.

Former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen testifies during Thursday's hearing.

Former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen is now testifying at today’s hearing.

Rosen and his then-deputy Richard Donoghue — who is also testifying — previously spoke with the committee behind closed doors about former President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against top Justice Department officials prior to Jan. 6, 2021.

The committee is expected to discuss how Trump and his allies pressured Rosen to consider false allegations that the 2020 election had been stolen at the same time Rosen was being elevated to lead the Justice Department in December 2020. Trump was replacing Attorney General William Barr — who had publicly said there wasn’t evidence of widespread voter fraud — with Rosen.

Emails from the Justice Department and White House officials show how Trump directed his team to push Rosen to join the legal effort to challenge the election result. CNN also reported that Trump wanted the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to look into his false allegations of vote fraud and discussed having the department appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, son of incoming President Biden.

Amid the pressure, Rosen said he refused to speak to Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

By the end of the year, it was clear Rosen and Donoghue had tired of the pressure campaign from the White House.

In an email on Jan. 1, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows says there were “allegations of signature match anomalies” in Fulton County, Georgia, asking Rosen to have a Justice Department official “engage on this issue immediately to determine if there is any truth to this allegation.”

Rosen forwarded the email to Donoghue later that day, saying: “Can you believe this? I am not going to respond to the message below.”

He has also spoken out about the attack on the US Capitol and has helped to oversee the federal law enforcement response to secure the inauguration.

Jeffrey Clark speaks at a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, DC, in 2020.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, is presenting evidence on Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department lawyer who former President Donald Trump sought to install as attorney general in the days before the riot.

Federal investigators conducted a search Wednesday of the home of Clark, sources briefed on the matter told CNN.  

Clark was at the center of an effort by Trump to get the Justice Department to falsely claim there was enough vote fraud in Georgia and other states that he lost, in a last-minute bid to help sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory and pave the way for him to remain in power.

A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office in Washington confirmed that “there was law enforcement activity in the vicinity” of Clark’s home but declined to comment on any particular person or activity. 

Attorneys for Clark didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Some background: After Jeffrey Rosen was named acting attorney general in December 2020 following the resignation of William Barr — who had publicly said the Justice Department did not uncover substantial evidence of voter fraud — Trump and his allies began pressuring Rosen over the fraud claims.

Trump’s push began what was a tumultuous period at the Justice Department in the lead-up to Jan. 6, 2021, when he considered replacing Rosen with Clark, then the department’s top energy lawyer.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members of the House select committee, outlined how former Department of Justice officials, who are testifying today “stood firm” against a “presidential pressure campaign” from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

“Presidential pressure can be really hard to resist,” Kinzinger said during his opening remarks. “Today we will focus on a few officials who stirred firm against President Trump’s political pressure campaign. When the President tried to misuse the department and install a loyalist at its helm, these brave officials refused and threatened to resign. They were willing to sacrifice their careers for the good of our country,” he said.

Kinzinger went on to discuss how the DOJ is a “unique” part of the executive branch of government, since the President oversees the department but “must not shape or dictate the department’s actions” or serve the President’s personal interests.

The Republican congressman said that during the hearing, the witnesses will layout how Trump repeatedly requested “to investigate claims of widespread fraud” and how they stood firm against him.

Watch:

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Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chair of the Jan. 6 House select committee investigating the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, said former President Trump wanted the Department of Justice to “legitimize” his election lies.

“Donald Trump didn’t just want the Justice Department to investigate; he wanted the Justice Department to help legitimize his lies, to baselessly call the election corrupt,” Thompson said in the hearing’s opening remarks.

Those testifying today resisted Trump’s pressure campaign, he said.

“It was a brazen attempt to use the Justice Department to advance the President’s personal political agenda,” Thompson said.

Watch:

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Actor Sean Pean, right, and former DC police officer Michael Fanone attend the House select committee hearing on Thursday.

Actor Sean Penn is at today’s hearing, sitting with officers who defended the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Penn told reporters, “I’m just here to observe just [as a] another citizen.”

Penn said he has been following the House select committee hearings.

He is seated next to former DC police officer Michael Fanone who is also a CNN contributor.

The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol has begun its fifth hearing of the month. 

The panel is expected to present evidence that shows former President Donald Trump’s attempt to use the Justice Department to back his election disinformation. 

The hearing will feature live testimony from Richard Donoghue, the former deputy attorney general, committee chairman Bennie Thompson said. 

Thompson has said the committee is trying to show that the people Trump and his allies have pressured to overturn the election were roadblocks “for his attempt to cling to power.” 

Here’s who is testifying today:

The US Capitol, seen from the Cannon House Office Building during a House select committee hearing on June 21 in Washington, DC.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill insurrection is preparing to delay its next round of hearings into July, the committee’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said Wednesday.

The committee will still hold its next hearing on Thursday, which will focus on then-President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on the Justice Department to intervene in the 2020 election, but then plans to take a break before holding another round of hearings next month.

Thompson said the committee needs more time to go through the new documentary footage it received from documentarian Alex Holder, who possesses never-before-seen footage of Trump and his family, new information from the National Archives, and new tips coming in through the panel’s tip line since the hearings started in order to move forward with its hearings. Thompson said he has reviewed some of the footage Holder provided to the committee, and characterized it as “important.”

He said that he hopes the committee will be able to “integrate [new evidence] into the last hearings.”

Members say the new information has come from a variety of sources, including a tip line the committee has set up.

“I would just say it’s coming from divergent sources, just speaking in terms of the people who contacted me. The country has really started to wake up, they see we’re running a serious, bipartisan, objective inquiry, and people are willing to come forward with their facts,” he said.

The schedule is still very fluid and is subject to change, but a round of hearings in July is the current goal. The House is scheduled to be in recess until the week of July 11, so Thompson said it is likely the hearings will not resume until “after the recess.”

A committee aide told CNN the committee could provide more insight into their schedule during Thursday’s hearing.

“The select committee continues to receive additional evidence relevant to our investigation into the violence of January 6th and its causes,” the aide said. “Following tomorrow’s hearing, we will be holding additional hearings in the coming weeks. We will announce dates and times for those hearings soon.”

Federal investigators are pursuing information in all seven battleground states that former President Trump lost, but where his campaign convened fake electors, a person briefed on the matter told CNN.

As CNN reported in January, Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw efforts in December 2020 to put forward illegitimate electors from the states, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the scheme.

The sources said members of Trump’s campaign team were far more involved than previously known in the plan, a core tenet of the broader plot to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory when Congress counted the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump and some of his top advisers publicly encouraged the “alternate electors” scheme in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico. But behind the scenes, Giuliani and Trump campaign officials actively choreographed the process, the sources said.

US Rep. Adam Schiff, a member of the Jan. 6 House select committee, told CNN the panel will show evidence about the scheme.

Federal prosecutors are reviewing the fake Electoral College certifications created by Trump allies that falsely declared him the winner of the seven states. The fake certificates were sent to the National Archives in the weeks after the election and had no impact on the electoral outcome.

Thursday’s hearing before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection turns the panel’s focus toward how former President Donald Trump tried to use the Justice Department to bolster his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Three top officials who led the Justice Department in the final days of the Trump administration will testify about how the then-President and his allies sought to enlist the department to give their baseless fraud allegations credibility and how Trump considered replacing the acting attorney general with an official who bought into his claims of fraud, according to committee aides.

Some background: After Jeffrey Rosen was named acting attorney general in December 2020 following the resignation of William Barr — who had publicly said the Justice Department did not uncover substantial evidence of voter fraud — Trump and his allies began pressuring Rosen over the fraud claims.

Trump’s push began what was a tumultuous period at the Justice Department in the lead-up to Jan. 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 inside the Justice Department.

The DOJ officials, along with lawyers in the White House counsel’s office, took part in a dramatic Jan. 3, 2021, meeting in the Oval Office with Clark and Rosen present, where Trump ultimately backed away from his plan to install Clark as the head of the Justice Department — after Rosen, Donoghue and Engel had threatened to resign in protest.

What else to watch for:

Jeffery Clark will be a major focus: On Thursday, Clark’s behind-the-scenes efforts to help Trump’s campaign subvert the election are likely to be the main focus.

Committee aides said the hearing would focus on the role that Clark played inside the Justice Department in pushing Trump’s false claims of fraud. Clark planned to “reverse the department’s investigative conclusions regarding election fraud,” according to committee aides, and wanted to send out letters to states suggesting there had been fraud.

His push was swiftly rejected by Rosen and Donoghue, which led to the Oval Office showdown where Trump considered putting Clark in charge of the department.

While serving as the acting head of civil cases at the Justice Department at the end of the Trump presidency, Clark floated plans to give Georgia’s legislature and other states backing to undermine the popular vote results. He gave credence to unfounded conspiracy theories of voter fraud, according to documents from the Justice Department, and communicated with Trump about becoming the attorney general, a Senate investigation found this month.

The extent of Clark’s talks with Trump in the days before Jan. 6 aren’t yet publicly known. Clark appeared before the committee for a deposition in February and pleaded the Fifth, according to the aides.

The Justice Department has been scrutinized in the past: Last year, the Senate Judiciary Committee released a lengthy 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 the DOJ witnesses who will be testifying publicly on Thursday.

Jan. 6 committee aides said that the panel’s investigation is answering a different set of questions than the Senate probe, 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 instance, was provided text messages showing how former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was connected to Clark through Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Scott Perry, CNN previously reported.

Perry was one of three people singled out in the Senate Judiciary report for further scrutiny, along with Pennsylvania state GOP Rep. Doug Mastriano — now the Republican nominee for governor — and Trump legal adviser Cleta Mitchell.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger will be leading the hearing: Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, will be the committee member doing the bulk of the questioning during Thursday’s hearing focused on the Justice Department.

That could mean that the committee will provide more information about what it says is evidence of Republican lawmakers seeking pardons from the Justice Department, including Perry.

The committee raised the pardons in its opening hearing. Afterward, Perry denied that he had sought a pardon, calling it an “absolute shameless and soulless lie.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier this month, Kinzinger said that more information about the pardons would be coming out in the hearing that he would lead.

Read more about what to expect from Thursday’s hearing here.

Chairperson Bennie Thompson swears in Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Secretary of State chief operating officer Gabriel Sterling (not pictured) during the fourth public hearing on June 21.

Calls for violence against members of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection are circulating on some of the same online platforms that helped fuel the lies that led to the riot at the US Capitol, a new analysis has found.   

Users on these platforms are openly calling for the execution of committee members, with Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney appearing to be a specific target. Calls for former Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged that were chanted throughout Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, 2021, continue to be echoed online.

Determining what is just rhetoric and what might be an active threat is a challenge for law enforcement. 

John Cohen, the former Department of Homeland Security Counterterrorism Coordinator and now an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, told CNN that authorities cannot treat social media posts with concerning language as simply hyperbole.   

Cohen described the monitoring of social media as a “resource intensive process that has to involve federal, state and local authorities who are working together, who are operating under strict protocols that ensure that they are able to distinguish between constitutionally protected speech and threat-related activity.” 

The online threats continue as Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger revealed Sunday he received a letter in the mail that threatened to execute him, his wife and their newborn. 

The decision by both Facebook and Twitter to kick then-President Donald Trump off its platforms for rule-breaking after the insurrection was a boon to a developing cottage industry of alternative social media platforms. 

The alternative sites, like Trump’s Truth Social platform, which launched in February, market themselves as bastions of free speech, capitalizing on the perception among some Republicans that they have been unfairly censored by Silicon Valley. Truth Social says it “seeks to create a free speech haven in the social media sphere and encourages your unencumbered free expression.” Its terms of service say posts should not be “violent” or “harassing.” 

An analysis by the group Advance Democracy, a not-for-profit that conducts public interest investigations, shared with CNN found posts on Truth Social calling for the execution of Jan. 6 committee members and others. The researchers searched for specific terms on the platforms like “execute.”  

One post on Truth Social includes a picture of a noose and reads, “The J6 committee are guilty of treason. Perpetuation of a insurrection hang them all.”  

In another post referencing Cheney and Pelosi, a user posted a GIF of a guillotine with the message, “#MGGA #MakeGuillotinesGreatAgain.”  

CNN asked Truth Social about several posts containing violent rhetoric on Tuesday, including the posts with a picture of a noose and a GIF of a guillotine. 

Truth Social did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment, but by Wednesday, the posts appeared to have been removed from the platform.

In addition to Truth Social, Advance Democracy also observed violent rhetoric linked to the January 6th committee posted to other alternative social media platforms 4chan — which was used by the suspect in the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York — as well as on Gab and on another message board popular among some Trump supporters. 

While many of the posts Advance Democracy identified appeared to have little engagement, all the posts are illustrative of a trend of frequent invocation of violence in these online communities. 

The post has since been removed. 

Truth Social and 4Chan did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment. 

Members of the House select committee investigating January 6 are taking additional security precautions amid heightened concerns over their safety as the public hearings detailing their findings continue, several of the lawmakers tell CNN. 

The precautions include security details for some of the members, they said.

CNN’s Melanie Zanona contributed to this reporting.

Read more here.

CNN has obtained the opening statement of Steven Engel, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel chief at the end of the Trump administration, who is one of the former officials testifying before the Jan. 6 committee today. 

“Although I was not personally responsible for these investigations, I did not doubt the judgment of the Attorney General and the Department’s senior leadership. As a presidential candidate, President Trump and his campaign had every right to pursue litigation in contesting the election results in the various federal and state courts. But absent credible evidence of a violation of federal law, the Department did not have any role to play in these election contests.” 

Engel also plans to recount an episode where he and other top DOJ leaders told Trump he shouldn’t install Jeffrey Clark, who believed in searching for more voter fraud, as the attorney general.

“On January 3, we met with the President and with Mr. Clark to explain why the Clark plan should not be pursued. We also made clear that the Department’s leadership could not remain if the President chose to pursue that course,” Engel says in his statement.

Former President Donald Trump is displayed on a screen during a hearing of the House select committee on June 21.

A half-century after Watergate captivated the country and ultimately led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation, the remarkable revelations of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection are competing with other distractions in a deeply divided nation.

A new Quinnipiac University Poll found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans are following news about the work of the committee at least somewhat closely, although only about one-quarter say they are following it very closely. So far, the poll found, the hearings do not seem to be changing minds about whether Trump committed a crime, with 46% of adults saying he did and 47% saying he did not.

Mny Americans seem to have simply tuned out, with Republicans citing their disdain for the mostly Democratic makeup of the committee, lack of interest in yet another divisive act from Washington or the simple fact of being busy with summer and exhausted with politics.

“I really think they are just after Trump,” said Bill Kumle, a Republican retiree in Atlanta. “They’re not after the truth.”

The findings — so far, at least — are largely seen through a familiar partisan lens that has dominated the Trump era.

Nozick is among the Republicans in Georgia who have never believed Trump’s false claims that he won the state, which is again emerging as a crucial battleground in November’s midterm elections. And Nozick believes the former President crossed a line when he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger looking “to find 11,780 votes” to usurp the will of the voters. Republican voters in the Peach State rebuked Trump’s efforts to oust Raffensperger — along with GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who also had rebuffed Trump’s entreaties to overturn the 2020 election — in primaries earlier this year.

“Our ex-President is just focused on his own wants and needs,” Nozick said. “To me, that’s not good. You’ve got to move on and accept what is and go on from there.”

Even so, Nozick said he did not see the value in the committee’s investigation. He said he would read its final conclusions but that he’d prefer for the country and his party to move on.

Read more on Americans’ reactions to the hearings here.

Several of former President Donald Trump’s closest allies sat for interviews during his final weeks in office with a British filmmaker after being assured they had editorial input over the final product, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Multiple people were told it was focused on Trump’s legacy and would be a flattering portrayal. 

But 17 months later, filmmaker Alex Holder has been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee and turned over hours of his footage. That has made some in the former President’s orbit nervous, they told CNN, mainly because several don’t recall the full extent of their comments.  

Several of the interviews, including with Ivanka Trump, were conducted after Trump had lost the election, but as he was still contesting it. Most of Ivanka’s interview focused on her relationship with her father, in addition to a public comment about the ongoing legal challenges over the election.

Others, including Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence, also sat down for interviews. Donald Trump Jr. sat down for an hour with Holder about three weeks before the election, another source said. They attempted to interview Donald Trump Jr. again but ultimately never did. 

A lawyer representing Holder denies that Trump was granted editorial control over the final product. 

Now there is some concern among certain figures about what was said on camera given hours of footage have been turned over. One former aide downplayed the likelihood anything relevant to the committee was said. 

A person familiar with the matter said the interviews were orchestrated by Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s Middle East peace envoy who left the administration in 2019 but remained in close touch with top officials. Greenblatt has not responded to CNN’s request for comment. 

Holder sat for a deposition with the committee Thursday morning behind closed doors. 

GOP Rep. Scott Perry speaks during a hearing in Washington, D.C. on March 10, 2021.

The Jan. 6 House select committee is expected to provide more details today about how some Republican members of Congress sought pardons from former President Donald Trump in the aftermath of Jan. 6, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The committee has only alluded to this dynamic in its first hearing, with Rep. Liz Cheney accusing GOP Rep. Scott Perry of seeking a pardon from Trump — something Perry has denied. But the committee has not provided evidence yet.

Today, the committee will provide more information about the matter but is also saving other information of how Republicans sought pardons for future hearings. 

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Road to Majority conference in Nashville on June 17.

The House select committee said it will present evidence on Thursday about how former President Donald Trump’s attempt to use the Justice Department to back his election disinformation.

It will be the fifth hearing this month, and feature live testimony from Richard Donoghue, the former deputy attorney general, committee chairman Bennie Thompson said.

Thompson said at the hearing on Tuesday, the committee is trying to show that the people Trump and his allies have pressured to overturn the election were roadblocks “for his attempt to cling to power.”

More background: The hearing is poised to revisit the drama at the department the weekend before Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump tried to install the department’s top energy lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, as attorney general because he was sympathetic to Trump’s unfounded theories of voting fraud. Clark had proposed the DOJ could give Georgia support to convene a special session to investigate the election, well after federal investigators found no evidence of widespread election fraud.

At a Jan. 3, 2021, Oval Office meeting, Donoghue and others told Trump that resignations would cascade across the top tiers of the Justice Department if Clark were made attorney general.

CNN previously reported the committee was also planning to have testimony from then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and the Office of Legal Counsel head Steven Engel. They, along with Donoghue and others from the White House counsel’s office, convinced Trump not to replace the department’s leadership.

Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a former Fulton County, Georgia, election worker, testifies during the June 21 hearing. Her mother, Ruby Freeman, sits behind her.

A video produced by the House Select Committee played in its last hearing on Tuesday detailed former President Donald Trump and his team’s efforts to sway election officials and intimidate election workers following President Biden’s 2020 election win.

Here’s a look at some of the details the committee laid out:

Former President Donald Trump is displayed on a screen during a hearing of the House select committee on June 21.

Members of the House select committee have been investigating what happened before, after and during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — and now they are presenting what they discovered to the public. 

The committee is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans. It was formed after efforts to create an independent 9/11-style commission failed. 

Rep. Liz Cheney is one of two Republicans on the panel appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled all five of his selections because Pelosi would not accept two of his picks. In July 2021, Pelosi invited GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to join the committee, making him the second GOP lawmaker to sit on the committee. 

Here’s who is on the panel — and key things to know about them: 

Democrats: 

Republicans 

Then-President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.

Throughout the 2020 campaign, former President Trump repeatedly lied about rampant voter fraud and claimed that the election would be “rigged” against him. He escalated this rhetoric after Election Day by falsely claiming victory, and continued pushing these lies after Biden became the projected President-elect.   

Trump’s campaign and his allies then filed dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits across the country, seeking to overturn the results, based on spurious fraud claims. Despite losing those lawsuits, Trump continued promoting these lies while pressuring federal, state, and local officials to help him stop the transition of power. These officials largely refused to help Trump with his plan.   

Trump repeated these lies during his Ellipse rally on Jan. 6, which helped spur the Capitol riot. Trump’s rhetoric inspired the majority of Republicans to believe that Biden did not win the 2020 election, according to CNN polling. Many of the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol also expressed this view.  

The Jan. 6 committee has released testimony from Trump advisers revealing that he was told shortly after the election that he lost – but he kept pushing ahead with disinformation and false claims about the election. Some academics and historians have dubbed this phenomenon as “the Big Lie.” 

Rusty Bowers, Arizona House speaker, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's Secretary of State, and Gabriel Sterling, Georgia's Secretary of State chief operating officer, are sworn in for a hearing of the Select committee on June 21.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol wrapped up its fourth hearing of the month on Tuesday. The panel presented evidence that showed how former President Donald Trump and his allies pressured election officials and workers in an effort to overturn the election.

Witnesses testified how they would not agree to Trump’s requests and how election lies led to threats and harassment. The committee heard testimony from Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his chief operating officer Gabe Sterling as well as Fulton County, Georgia, election worker Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss.

Here are the top lines you might have missed:

Read more takeaways here.

The Jan. 6 select committee will hear testimony Thursday from three high-ranking Department of Justice officials who rejected pleas from members of the Trump administration to investigate baseless claims of voter fraud between the November election and Jan. 6, 2021.

The hearing is expected to focus on the pressure campaign former President Donald Trump and his allies put on the Justice Department to any to intervene in the election.

These are the witnesses: