Jan. 6 committee holds fifth hearing

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.

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. 

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.

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."

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 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.

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.

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.

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.