# Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021)/2:38pm

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​[2:38 p.m.]
    BY
Q The meeting ended—you said 2-1/2 hours—close to 9 o'clock at night by this point on January 3rd?
A Yeah. It's after 9:00. I think it was about 3 hours total.
Q Where'd you go next?
A We walked out of the Oval Office. We went up to the box where we'd stored all our phones. We were removing them, and Jeff Clark said something to the effect of, "Look, gentlemen, I know we were all in there advocating what we thought was best for the country, so no hard feelings." And no one responded. We just looked at him. He took his phone, he turned, and he walked out.
We went briefly up to the White House Counsel's Office and then headed back to DOJ headquarters.
Q So it's fair to say, a sense of relief? You and Mr. Cipollone, Mr. Rosen, Mr. Philbin in that office felt like you had averted a negative outcome?
A Yes, very much so.
Q Did you take steps then to reassure the assistant attorneys general that you had spoken with earlier that afternoon about the outcome?
A When we got back to the Department, we had a quick conference call with them to let them know just generally how it had gone, that there was a long meeting in the Oval Office, that there would not be leadership change, and that we should all just focus on the work come Monday morning.
Q All right.
A couple of phone calls later that night. Does the President call you directly after ​this meeting is over, a little bit later that night, around 10 o'clock?
Q Yes. Yes. He called me probably 10:00, 11:00, something like that, at night on my cell phone. He said that he had just received word that somewhere outside Atlanta there was a truck that was, in his words, "in the custody of an ICE agent" and that it contained shredded ballots and that this somehow was evidence of fraud.
So I said, "Well, Mr. President, if it's an ICE agent, understand, they don't belong to DOJ; they belong to DHS. And if they need anything from us, they know how to do that. So I'll just leave that to them."
And he said, "Okay, fine. That's fair. But do me a favor and make sure Ken Cuccinelli knows about it," because Ken was above ICE as part of the DHS leadership. So I said that I would pass that along to Ken.
I got in touch with Ken. I said, "I received a call from the President." He had the agent's name. I don't remember what the agent's name was, but it was something, a specific ICE agent down in Atlanta. I gave Ken the agent's name. I said, "This is what the President relayed. Do whatever you will with it. If you need help from us, let us know, but, otherwise, I'm leaving this with you." And he said, "Fine," and he took care of it.
Q All right.
Did you also then try to reach B.J. Pak, the then-U.S.-attorney in Atlanta?
A I did. I sent B.J. an email asking him to call me. He did call me. I told him about just the portion of the conversation that related to him.
He told me that, in fact, he did say that quote but that he had said it back in 2016 when he was serving in the Georgia legislature. He was critical of the President. But, nonetheless, he got the U.S. attorney job.
And I said, "Well, look, obviously, the President didn't know this. He was pretty ​upset. He was adamant that you're a Never Trumper and that you should never have been in his administration and that, when your resignation comes in tomorrow, he wants it accepted right away, and you'll be out."
I did, however, tell him, pursuant to a conversation that Jeff Rosen and I had back at the Department headquarters, that he could stay on for 2 weeks as a DOJ employee if he wanted to.
Jeff Rosen came up with that. He said, you know, we can make B.J. a Schedule C employee, keep him on for a couple weeks, make his exit more graceful. The President was very clear that he couldn't serve as the U.S. attorney after tomorrow, but he didn't say he wanted him out of the Department.
So Jeff Rosen said, "Offer that to B.J. You know, let me know that he's got our support if he wants to stay on for a few weeks to ease his exit. That's fine with us." I made that offer to B.J. I told him it was coming from Jeff Rosen. He said he appreciated it; he would think about it and let me know.
He then called me back early the next morning, said he was on his way to his office. He was going to clear out his office and leave. He appreciated the offer, but he was not going to take it if the President didn't want him in the Department. He was just going to go.
Q Uh-huh. And then he did, in fact, resign abruptly and leave on January 4th. Is that right?
A Yes.
Q Okay.
And then did you also follow up with Mr. Christine, speak to him about this truck allegation when he became the acting U.S. attorney in Atlanta?
A Yes, I talked to Bobby that night. I gave him a very brief explanation. I ​said, "I'm not going to get into details. B.J.'s leaving. He's going to be out tomorrow. For whatever reason, the Presidents wants you to take over Northern District." I think we had to issue some sort of order or something. I said, "The administrative guys will take care of that first thing tomorrow morning. And just go up there and do whatever you see fit."
And he did. He spent a couple weeks up there. Ultimately, he concluded that the election matters that were brought to the attention of that office were handled appropriately, I guess. I don't want to speak for him, but I think that was generally what his impression was.
But one of those related to this truck. I don't think I'd talked to him about the truck that night because I think I'd probably talked to Bobby Christine before the President called me.
Q Yeah.
A But, within the next day or two, that came up, that this truck had been located. DHS had the truck. And DHS talked, I think, to FBI; they talked to the U.S. Attorney's Office. What do you do about this truck? And so now that was Bobby's issue.
And Corey Amundson, who was the head of PIN, was also down in Atlanta because the special election was taking place that day, that Tuesday. And so I basically said to them, "Look, you two are down there. You two know what we do and don't do. I trust your judgment. Figure it out. If you need something, let me know, but, other than that, I'm leaving this to you guys."
Q Yeah.
Yeah, there's an exhibit that I—Greg, I apologize—sent to you late last night because we just got an unredacted version. It's exhibit 58.
​It's just a one-page email, Mr. Donoghue, that you sent directly to Bobby Christine on this truck issue. Do you see that?
A Yeah. Right.
Q And it indicates, "As discussed with both of you"—and you're copying Mr. Amundson from PIN—"while we're all skeptical of this claim, we should do what we can today within our established policies, and no more."
You're conveying to both Christine and Amundson some skepticism about the claim, but suggesting that they follow protocol and evaluate the credibility of this allegation respect to the truck. Is that right?
A Yes.
Q And your understanding—I think you just said that they did that and found that there was no reason—it didn't give them any pause, with respect to the overall integrity of the Georgia election.
A Right.
And if I remember right with regards to the truck specifically, I think the explanation was, yes, the truck was full of shredded ballots, but it was full of shredded ballots from a prior election, and that what was going on was, through the routine records-retention practices of the county or the State, old ballots were being shredded to make way for the 2020 ballots so that there would be room to store them. I think that was the explanation for that. And that made perfect sense.
Q Okay.
. All right. Let me stop there and ask, Ms. Cheney, if you have any specific can questions about that last—these White House meetings and the current line of questions.
Ms. Cheney. I don't. Thanks
​ Okay. I'm going to—just a couple more things from me before I turn it over to , Mr. Donoghue.
    BY :
Q You were a career military and Department of Justice professional, years and years of honorable public service. I'm just wondering how someone like you, how you felt about all of this, this whole series of events where the President of the United States is persistently pushing you and the Department to take these actions. How did that affect someone like you with that long record of honorable and career service?
A The whole thing was a little bit surreal, of course. And, frankly, I was just glad to be in the position that I was in at the time it happened. I was glad to be there with Jeff Rosen, with Steve Engel, and the others. And I thought we were a good team that were acting—the team was acting in the best interests of the country. I was just glad to be part of it. That's all.
Q What, in your view, would've happened if you hadn't stood up or if Mr. Clark had been installed as Acting Attorney General?
Mr. Andres. I mean, I'm not sure we really want to get into too many hypotheticals, but, you know, if you want to answer that, Rich.
Mr. Donoghue. I assume that if Mr. Clark had been put in the position he would've sent the letter out. But, frankly, I think it probably all would've run aground at that point. I think it would've triggered mass resignations, and I think none of the investigations would've actually gotten done in the timeframe.
I think it would've been so wildly disruptive that, while the letter itself would be damaging both to the Department and the country, I honestly don't think any of it would've changed the outcome. It's just so hard to imagine that so many things would've happened in such a short period of time that the outcome would have changed ​in any way.
    BY
Q Uh-huh.
Of all the people around the President that were in these meetings or conversations, besides Mr. Clark, was there anyone else who was supportive of what the President was suggesting or seemed to be concerned about the election fraud, besides, again, the President himself in the multiple conversations and Mr. Clark?
A Not in the meetings I attended, no.
Q Was it rather the case, Mr. Donoghue, that everyone else was, like you, telling him that there was not sufficient basis to do some of the things that he contemplated—Mr. Cipollone, Mr. Philbin, Mr. Meadows, others?
A In the meetings I was in, yes, that's correct. But it was also clear that a lot of other people were talking to the President and telling him something diametrically opposed to what we were saying to him.
Q Yeah. And were those people outside of the government, as far as you could tell?
A As far as I could tell, yes. I had no interaction with them. But, yeah, you had the Kurt Olsens and other people who were clearly in contact with the President and telling him different things.
A Okay.
All right. I don't have anything else. Do you want to take a break or march right into the January 6th stuff? Do you want 5 minutes?
Mr. Andres. I just want to take a break to make sure there's nothing we want to add or not to—
Yeah.
​Mr. Andres. —this portion. And we can, sort of, break and start the second part. So maybe just give us 10 minutes and come back?
That's fine. I appreciate that, Greg. Take your time.
Mr. Andres. Okay, good.
[Recess.]
Thanks. So I just wanted to then start.
EXAMINATION
    BY
Q Our focus for hopefully the next couple hours will be on the preparations for January 6th. But, obviously, it struck me that the time period from the events of the last few hours that you just discussed with my colleague essentially overlaps with the preparations the Department was taking for January 6th.
Is that fair to say, Mr. Donoghue?
A Yes, that's right.
Q So from the end of December until the 6th itself.
A Right.
Q What impact do you believe that DOJ's position of not investigating the alleged election fraud had on the significance of January 6th itself, the joint session?
A Well, I think I'd have to address that by talking about what I think would've happened if we had followed the more traditional approach.
So you have all these allegations about fraud that supposedly changed the outcome of the election. Had we not done what Attorney General Barr instructed us to do and conduct at least some sort of limited investigations, I think the Department would never have been able to comment one way or the other as to whether there are merits to these allegations. And so, because we were able to conduct some, sort of, very limited ​investigations on these key allegations, the AG was in a position to say that they're not supported by the evidence and, therefore, there's no reason to doubt the outcome of the election.
Now, we still had January 6th; we still have, to this day, tens of millions of Americans who doubt the outcome. So it obviously didn't avoid that. But I think the situation would've been even worse if the Department were to say, well, we, as pursuant to our practice, sat on our hands, didn't do any investigation, so we can't tell you whether there's any truth to this or not.
Q But my question is, by the Department saying, we are not going to investigate the number of claims that you just walked through that the White House wanted DOJ to investigate—if those investigations had happened, would the joint session certification have happened? I'm not talking about the rally, but there would've been—
Mr. Andres. I'm sorry . I don't think that's what the testimony was or what Rich said. Can you just break that down a little more, when you say—
. Sure.
Mr. Andres. —the Department didn't investigate?
    BY :
Q If the investigations that the White House had requested were open, were being pursued by Department of Justice, in your, you know, understanding of the certification, the significance of the joint session, would that still have been able to occur?
A So I think the answer is, the Department did do investigations, albeit limited ones.
So, if you take the allegation about the difference between the number of votes certified and the number of votes cast in Pennsylvania, we looked at it, we addressed it, it was easy to dispel that allegation.
​If you look at the claim from the truck driver who supposedly drove ballots from New York to Pennsylvania, we looked at it, we did the investigation, there was nothing to it.
If you look at the allegations relating to the State Farm Arena, we talked to the witnesses, we reviewed the video, we looked at it.
This issue about the shredded ballots in Georgia, we looked at it.
You know, we didn't conduct sprawling investigations with search warrants and subpoenas and things like that because it just wasn't necessary, but we did look at each of these allegations, at least the ones that purported to be of such a scale that they could have changed the outcome in a particular State.
And, because we looked at them, I think we were in a position—the Attorney General was in a position to say publicly that we don't see it and the American people should trust the outcome.
So it wasn't a matter of we refused to do—we certainly didn't do everything the President wanted, but we certainly did take what I viewed as appropriate steps to determine whether or not there was anything to these allegations, and, because we did that, we were able to address it.
Q Understood.
So I want to start, then, with exhibit 29. There was an email from AAG Rosen requesting a—to the then-acting U.S. attorney of D.C., Michael Sherwin about requesting a meeting about the preparations for January 6th. That should be exhibit 29 in your binder.
A Okay.
Q Now, if you look at that email that was sent on December 28th—and there appeared to be no response from Mr. Sherwin.
​A Right.
Q What prompted Mr. Rosen to want to request a meeting with Michael Sherwin about January 6th specifically?
A So we knew that January 6th was on the calendar. We knew, obviously, that was the day that the electoral college votes were going to be reported out in the Senate, and we knew that there were going to be protests.
So, on the 28th, that Monday, when we came to work, we shifted our focus, in part, to preparing for that. And so the Acting AG wanted to talk to Mike Sherwin, who was the acting U.S. attorney in D.C., about what the preparations were, how they were going, was there anything we could or should be doing to make sure that we were fully prepared for the 6th.
And so they reached out to him. Obviously, there was some difficulty in getting a hold of him. And I believe he had a family member who was ill at that time, and that impacted his availability a little bit. But we did have discussions with Mike Sherwin that week and straight through the 6th.
Q Apart from it being on the calendar, was there any intelligence about the potential for violence that prompted Mr. Rosen to want to have that meeting?
A Yes. We were concerned about the potential for violence just because we had seen that people were very upset about the election. We had seen, through the summer, riots around the country where there had been violence. We were well aware of the political tension in the country. And we knew that if you have tens of thousands of very upset people showing up in Washington, D.C., that there was potential for violence.
Q And who was in charge of briefing yourself and Mr. Rosen in terms of what the available intelligence was?
​A We got information through a number of sources. Primarily it came through the FBI. As I think I indicated earlier, we had regular meetings scheduled with the FBI throughout the week. We would also talk to them—I talked to Dave Bowdich several times a day at this point, I think. So the information flow was pretty free. But they did give us updates as we got closer to the 6th about what they were seeing in terms of intelligence.
We also got intelligence from other sources, such as Mike Sherwin, what he was hearing and seeing; DHS was doing intelligence; MPD was doing intelligence. So all these different law enforcement agencies who were working in conjunction in preparation for the 6th were doing intelligence and sharing it with one another.
Q So, turning to exhibit 30, there's a handwritten note that you have from the call with Michael Sherwin.
A Yes.
Q Do you remember who was on that call other than yourself and Mr. Sherwin?
A The DAG was on this call. I'm not sure if anyone else was, but it was at least the three of us.
Q So, in the handwritten notes, you say that the—I believe it says—suggests the crowd will be less than 10,000—is that right?—at that point on December 30th.
A Right. The first line says, "Social media suggests less than 10,000." And then underneath there it says, "Also looking at hotel reservations and travel."
Q Who provided the information about social media?
A Mike Sherwin did.
Q Was it your understanding that Michael Sherwin's office or the Washington Field Office had social media information about January 6th?
​A I knew that the FBI and the other agencies routinely used social media to try to get insights about what might be coming, and so it didn't seem strange to me that he was citing that as a source for their estimate of the crowd size.
Q Now, the next line says, "Thus far, solely pro-Trump protesters planning to come in. No intel regarding counter-protesters."
A Yes.
Q And do you remember who said that on the call?
A Mike Sherwin.
Q And why was it significant that there was pro-Trump protesters coming and not—
A One of the—
Q Go ahead.
A One of the main concerns we had was that you were going to have thousands of pro-Trump protesters come to the city and thousands of anti-Trump protesters come to the city and that we would have clashes in the streets of Washington between these two groups.
So, as we got closer to the 6th, the intelligence seemed to indicate that the anti-Trump groups were not going to show up, which, to some extent, was a relief to us, because it minimized the potential for conflict between those two groups.
We had seen conflict between those groups in the past. There was a murder in Portland at the end of August, where a pro-Trump protester was shot by an anti-Trump, ANTIFA-aligned individual. We knew that there was potential for violence, and our biggest concern, early on, was that we were going to have these two groups clash in the streets and that we'd have this, sort of, chaotic scene all over the city.
Q So, in the sense of not having those counter-protesters, there was an ​anticipation that there would be not that type of violence. Is that fair to say?
A Yes, that's right. That was some relief to hear that it would be essentially be a one-sided protest, because it lessens the potential for violence.
Q In hindsight, do you believe that played out to be accurate?
A Generally, yes. Because, as difficult and as ugly as January 6th was at the Capitol, we didn't have people getting murdered all over D.C. on that day. And, again, if you look at what happened in Portland, the assailant there simply walked up to that individual and shot him point-blank for no reason other than he had a political difference with him.
Q Now, it also states that "MS," meaning Michael Sherwin—that's your notes—"will send email updates on Friday describing details, and planning on sending daily emails."
How involved was Michael Sherwin in the preparation for January 6th?
A He was very involved. He ran the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office. They work in close conjunction with the Metro PD, Capitol Police, and other law enforcement agencies that are specific to D.C. Every arrest that's made in D.C. ultimately gets processed through his office, so they had a good working relationship.
If there were arrests that arose from this, as we knew there may well be, they would've been processed through his office. He had AUSAs sitting at the various command posts.
And so, yes, he was very much involved in this. And the DAG and I both were relying, to some extent, on what he was reporting to us about what to expect.
Q After this meeting, what steps, if any, did you and Mr. Rosen take in terms of preparing DOJ's components for January 6th?
A So, around this time, the Acting AG decided that, even though we'd not ​received any requests, he wanted to make sure that we had every available asset in or near D.C. in case the situation got out of control in the city on January 6th.
So, pursuant to that, I called each of the heads of the five law enforcement agencies within DOJ, and I spoke to them and said, "The Acting AG wants to know what kind of resources you can offer up in terms of tactical teams who we can bring to D.C. to be here in case one of our partners needs reserves."
And, pursuant to that, each of those agencies sent special operations teams to Washington in advance of January 6th. We had them prepositioned in or outside the Capitol for that day. And, ultimately, when the Capitol Police asked for assistance that afternoon, we were able to deploy them fairly quickly to get them to the Capitol.
You have to keep in mind that these are special tactical teams. It's things like the FBI SWAT Team or the FBI Hostage Rescue Team or the Marshals Special Operations Group. These are not street cops. We don't have street police officers in the Justice Department. We're not in a position to do street policing.
But we told our partners that we would have reserves, and if anyone had a problem or got overwhelmed or needed assistance, they just needed to reach out to us and we would deploy those units to help them out.
Q Can you tell us which five components you reached out to?
A So, within DOJ, you have the FBI, ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons. Those are our five law enforcement agencies.
Each one of them provided specialized times. So FBI had their SWAT teams and their HRT teams, as well as bomb teams. ATF had their special operators. The Marshals had the special operations groups that I mentioned earlier. BOP sent what they call their SORT; I think it's Special Operations Response Teams. They sent those to D.C.
​And then DEA was assigned to be, sort of, like, 24 hours behind. They had special operations teams, but we wanted them to be slightly in reserve, so that if we had deploy everyone on day one, we had fresh officers to step in on day two. So DEA was on, like, a 24-hour lag behind everyone else.
But they all had a significant number of special operators designated to support whatever was going to happen on January 6th.
Q I want to draw your attention to exhibit 31, which is a memo from the Bureau of Prisons to obtain the Deputy Attorney General's approval or disapproval essentially for staffing for January 6th.
A Yes, I see it.
Q Would you or anyone in senior leadership at DOJ have received this from the other components? In other words, would there be paperwork to reflect the staffing and resources that were provided by DOJ's components for January 6th?
A Not for all of them, because it is driven by their statutory authority. So BOP, since they are generally limited to BOP institutions, they would not have general Title 18 authority to, like, make street arrests, so they had to be deputized to perform those functions. An FBI agent, who has inherently Title 18 authority because of their position, would not need a deputization. So there were some that needed it, some that did not.
These BOP operators were brought into Washington specifically to protect the DOJ headquarters, because we wanted to make sure that we did not draw resources away from any other law enforcement agency to protect our own building. Obviously, the Department was a potential target as well, because a lot of people were very upset with the Department and of the view that the Department hasn't done what it should do with regard to the election.
​Q And the calls—well, how did you communicate AG Rosen's desire to have these components called upon? Was that in an email or a phone call?
A I called each of the five agency leads separately. I know them all. We all work well together. I said, this is what the AG wants. And they all said, fine, no problem. And they either told me on the spot what they would be sending or they got back to me in very short order and said, this is what we can send.
Q And the timeframe for this is—when do you think those calls were made?
A I would say someplace after December 28th, so it's maybe the 28th, 29th, 30th, somewhere in there. It's in advance of December 6th, certainly. We had move people from around the country, we had to move their equipment. So you need a couple of days to move all these people and their equipment to D.C.
Mr. Andres. In advance to January 6th. You said December 6th.
Mr. Donoghue. Oh, I'm sorry. I misspoke and said December 6th.
Thank you.
    BY :
Q Exhibits 32 and 33 is some of the intelligence received by the Washington Field Office. And I know you said you've reviewed this prior to today, but exhibit 32, for the record, is pages from Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research unit, which includes tweets and pictures about January 6th; as well as, exhibit 33 is an email to WFO about thedonald.win blog citing essentially potential violence, as well as a blog received from the Anti-Defamation League.
Now, all of this information was sent to WFO. Were you aware of any of this specific intelligence, that outside resources were being sent to the Bureau?
A No. I never saw any of these until recently in preparation for these interviews.
​Q At the time, at the end of December, do you believe that you, senior leadership at DOJ, as well as FBI, had an accurate threat assessment going into January 6th?
A I think that we all understood the danger that was posed. I think we all understood that there were certain possible targets and that the potential for violence was very real. So I think we had a good understanding of what could happen. Obviously, what did happen was, in some sense, a worst-case scenario, but I thought we had a good understanding of the threat as we went into this.
And I thought we had good coordination across the agencies, such that the agencies that had specific areas of responsibility, such as the Capitol and the Capitol Police, were responsible for those areas, and we were confident they could handle it, and everyone was confident that everyone else would be ready, willing, and able to provide assistance if that was needed.
Q Well, let's skip ahead to January 3rd. And you spoke about this a little bit in the prior section, about a call with DOD in preparation for January 6th.
I'm going to turn to exhibit 34, which is your handwritten notes—
A Yes.
Q —from that call. Could you describe who was on that call and what the purpose was?
A The call was the afternoon of Sunday, January 3rd. It was DOD, DOJ, Interior, DHS, and the National Security Advisor, at least. I indicated in the parentheticals there who some of the participants were. There may have been some others that I just didn't capture there.
And we basically discussed what we were doing to respond to the potential threat, who had what resources, what were the likely target areas, did everyone understand ​what everyone else's responsibility was, did everyone understand what the agencies, sort of, to their left and right were doing.
And so we had sort of a discussion around the virtual table as to what we were doing to prepare for the 6th and to offer assistance to each other as needed.
Q Did DOD arrange this call and lead the call?
A I think they scheduled the call. I don't know that it was really led per se by anyone or any agency. But I remember DOD spoke first, and then we kind of went around the table saying, well, this is what DOJ's got, you know, we have X number of special operators, we have them in or near the city, if anyone needs help, just speak up—that kind of thing.
Park Police belong to Interior, so Interior talked about what the posture was of the Park Police. DHS talked about Federal Protective Service and how they were covering, you know, two or three dozen buildings within the city, and so on. So everyone kind of went around and talked about what they were doing to prepare for the 6th.
Q And who spoke on behalf of DOD?
A The Acting AG.
Q I'm sorry, on behalf of the Department of Defense, who do you remember speaking on that?
A Oh, I'm sorry, DOD. I thought you said DOJ.
Q That's okay.
A General Milley spoke at the outset. Acting Secretary Miller also spoke. There may have been others, but I specifically remember General Milley and Secretary Miller talking.
Q Did you have any conversations with the chief of staff for Mr. Miller, Kash Patel, at that time or any time?
​A I don't know if he was on this call. I did have conversations with Kash Patel separately, in part in relation to that Italy allegation that was discussed a few hours ago.
Q Can you describe those conversations?
And let me just clarify. The Italy conversation, I believe, you had on December 30th, the request to investigate the claims of the Italy—I don't even know how to describe it, but—
A Yeah.
Q And was Mr. Patel at DOD at that time, end of December?
A I believe he was, because I think that the chief of staff brought that up first in his office on December 29th. And, as part of that conversation, he referred it to us, he said, check it out.
I think at some point he said, you know, "Maybe you could have FBI agents go over there and just interview this guy." And we said, "No, no, it doesn't work that way. We can't just put FBI agents on a plane and send them to a foreign country and have them interview people. You have to go through the MLAT procedure. It'll take months," and so on and so forth.
And someone said, "Well, DOD's got people on the ground. Maybe they could do it." And we didn't really weigh in on that. It was kind of like, that's a DOD issue. If you want to talk to them, so be it.
And I think I ended up on the phone with Kash Patel a couple days later, maybe January 1st. He called me and said, "What is this situation with the guy in Italy?" And I told him what I knew, and he said, "Okay, thanks." And we hung up, and that was it. I've never met him in person. I think that was the only conversation we had on the phone.
Q Was there—
​A And I don't think DOD did anything with that. I think it was just—they took it under advisement.
Q So let me just understand. So he called you to see if DOJ was following up on the Italy claim?
A No, I think—
Q Or offering—
A I think somehow that had worked its way back to DOD. I don't know how. And Kash Patel called me and said, "I heard you were given some information by the chief of staff about this Italy thing. Can you tell me what this is all about?" And I relayed to him what I knew at that point, which was: Chief of staff told us this. I googled the guy. This is what I learned. It really doesn't seem like there's anything to this, but that's up to you guys. And he said, "Oh. Okay, I get it. Thanks." And that was it.
Q Okay.
Who was your primary DOD contact? Meaning, on your level, to what level did you reach out to anyone over at DOD?
A With regard to this, I wasn't really in contact with anyone. I had dealt with the DOD General Counsel and some other people at DOD on different matters that involved the Department and DOD.
But with regard to January 6th preparation, we had this call on the 3rd; we had another call on the 4th. On both of those, General Milley was on the call, the Acting Secretary was on the call. They also ended up on calls on the 6th when I was at the Capitol. So we had some communication at that level.
Q Back to your notes for that day, it states towards the end, "DOD asked for civilian lead for ops in D.C."
A Yes.
​Q Asked if—sorry, I think have it right—asked if DOJ is willing to do that as they did in Lafayette Square.
Let me just ask you first, when DOD asked if you were—for the civilian lead for ops in D.C., what did you understand that to mean?
A General Milley brought this up, and it was very clear that he did not want any asset of the military involved at all in this, if possible. And that was fine. We were all in agreement with that. You know, we was very adamant about, the last thing this country needs is to have Active Duty troops on the streets of our capital. And we all agreed with that, so that wasn't much of a discussion.
National Guard is a little different because National Guard can provide backup to local law enforcement. So there's a distinction there. But we were all in agreement with General Milley.
And he said something to the effect of, "Can we get a civilian agency to take the lead on this? And, DOJ, can you do that? Can you be the lead, take the lead role in coordinating all this stuff?"
And DAG Rosen answered, "No. We are not prepared to do that at this time." And we had already had a call set up for the next day, the 4th. So he said, "I can give you more detail later and explain why, but we're not going to do that."
And the reason was that we had no authority over many of these components, nor could we have authority over those components. So DOJ had no authority over the Park Police, who belong to Interior. We had no authority over FPS, who belong to DHS. And that's even within the executive branch. We certainly had no authority over the Capitol Police, who reported up to the legislature. We had no authority over Metro P.D., who reported up to the city officials in D.C.
So the problem was, you have this fractured authority and jurisdiction in D.C. so ​that no one, no one agency, could be in charge of the operation.
I understood from General Milley's perspective why he wanted that, because, within the military operation, you always have unity of command. There's always one person in charge, and everyone falls in line behind that one commander. The problem was, given how fractured the political and legal authority was in D.C., there was no way to place one agency on top of everyone else.
And so what we had to do was coordinate closely and know what everyone else was doing and trying to do and who had what responsibilities.
Q It appears from the question, as you have it written, though, that DOD believed that DOJ did take on that authority as the lead for the summer. Is that fair to say?
A I don't know what he meant by "as it did back at Lafayette Square," and I didn't ask. I wasn't there when Lafayette Square happened. I was still in New York. So I don't know what General Milley's perception was of what was going on at Lafayette Square.
But I didn't chime in and prolong the call. It was just, he made the request, the DAG answered very quickly, "No, we're not going to do that, I'll explain more why later," and we moved on.
Q Was there a reaction from General Milley at that point when Mr. Rosen said, no, it would not take on the lead?
A No.
Q Okay. So, later—is there anything you want to add about that call that you had on January 3rd?
A No. Just, as you can see from the notes, we discussed the, sort of, key locations—the Capitol, Lafayette Square, Washington Monument, Freedom Plaza.
​We talked about who had responsibility for which of those key areas. So, for instance, the Park Police had the monuments. Capitol Police had the Capitol. FPS had the various Federal buildings. We had DOJ. MPD had the city overall for all the areas that were not covered by someone else. So everyone had their own area of responsibility that they were going to take care of.
Q And would there have been a benefit to put one person in charge of all these different agencies who were involved in protecting, securing—
A There might've been, but keep in mind, you've got three branches of government—I didn't even get into the Supreme Court Police here, but they exist too, right? And they report up to the Supreme Court.
So who's going to give up their power? Is the mayor of D.C. going to give her power to the executive branch and surrender control of MPD to the executive branch? Probably not. Is the executive branch going to surrender its power to the legislature because the Capitol Police should be running everything? Probably not.
This is a paradigm that had been used over and over many times and that had worked and that was successful because the agencies had expertise in covering their own areas. No one was better equipped to protect the Capitol than the Capitol Police, so it made perfect sense to leave that to them and to simply tell them, if you need assistance, let us know and we'll provide it.
So it wasn't as if anyone was looking at this, saying, "Wow, this is broken. We need one agency in charge." And even if we had drawn that conclusion, who would that agency have been?
So, again, it's a very unusual situation in D.C., where you have three branches of Federal Government, all of which have their own authorities and their own law enforcement agencies. And then you have the local D.C. authorities, like the mayor and ​the city council, exercising authority independent from the main Federal Government.
Q So I want to jump ahead to that evening. You spoke at length about that January 3rd 6:00 p.m. meeting at the White House.
According to the Army official timeline, Secretary Miller and Milley have just met with President Trump. In fact, you said you saw General Milley that evening.
A Yes.
Q Did former President Trump mention the activation of the D.C. National Guard at any time during the White House meeting that you were present at, or was it solely about election matters?
A No, it was solely about the change in leadership at the Department, or the potential change in leadership. Nothing about January 6th was discussed in the Oval Office when I was there.
Q Now, according to Secretary McCarthy, after that meeting that General Milley had on the 3rd, the White House designated DOJ as the lead Federal agency. Was this designation mentioned to you at all by anyone from the White House?
A No. At no time prior to January 6th did I or, to my knowledge, anyone else at DOJ receive information that we had been designated as a lead Federal agency.
And more so, when we had the conversation on the 4th with General Milley and Secretary Miller and Secretary McCarthy and we told them we would not be the lead Federal agency, no one came back and said, "But the White House has already designated you as such." So it doesn't make any sense.
Q Before—
Mr. Andres. Which isn't to say that on January 6th you were the lead Federal agency either.
Mr. Donoghue. Right. Exactly. I mean, things change on January 6th and we ​can get to that. But I don't think at any point we were designated by anyone to be the lead Federal agency.
Before we move on to January 4th, are there any questions up until this point?
I should note that Mr. Schiff was in the room for about 20 minutes and has since left.
Ms. Cheney, do you have any questions?
Ms. Cheney. I don't. Thanks,
    BY :
Q So, starting with January 4th, you noted earlier that you have a 9:30 a.m. briefing with the FBI every Tuesday or Wednesday, I think you said?
A It's Monday and Wednesday. Yes.
Q Monday. Was anything addressed at that January 4th meeting about January 6th, about the security preparations going in?
A Yes. We discussed it on the 4th. We discussed it on the 6th. We had discussed it the prior week too. It was just becoming more prevalent in the morning conversation as we got toward the 6th.
Q So I want to move to—exhibit 35 is an email at 12:21 on Monday, January 4th, to yourself, as well as Michael Sherwin and John Moran. And it is essentially an overview of the U.S. Government posture going into January 6th sent by Acting Chief of the Counterterrorism Section .
A Yes.
Q So, on the third page—on the fourth page, I believe, where it has "DOJ-FBI," it says, "FBI operations relative to the potential unrest will be conducted out of their Washington, D.C. Field Office. There are no current plans to activate the national SIOC."
​That's at 12:21.
A Yes, I see that report.
Q Okay.
It also, in this email, estimates the crowd to be around 28,000 people to be expected. And that's the top of the second page.
A Okay.
Q Now, I want to—
A My understanding—
Q Go ahead.
A Just so you understand, the range that we heard throughout this week leading up to it was somewhere between below 10,000, up to 30,000. That was sort of the range of what we were hearing.
And that was based on a number of different metrics, one of which was the number of permits that had been issued. We have nothing to do with the permitting process in D.C., but we understand that they apply for a permit; in submitting the permit application, they estimate how many people will show up. So that's one metric you can use. Others were based on social media, as well as the hotel reservations and things of that nature.
So we were getting this sort of sliding scale of less than 10,000, up to 30,000, throughout the week. And that's a relatively small turnout for a Washington, D.C., event. So, again, that sort of gave us some comfort, too, thinking that this was not 100,0000 people we were going to be looking at.
Q Got it.
Now, exhibit 36 is a 2:02 email from specific to January 6th reporting. And in—
​A All right.
Q —the middle of the page there, it goes through some information received from the SITE Intelligence Group, which is an American NGO that tracks jihadists and White supremacist activity.
We'll go through some of what Mr. flagged for you. But is it typical for DOJ or the Counterterrorism Section to rely on an outside group to provide that type of threat information?
A I don't know if it's typical. You'd have to ask the FBI about that. They can give you more insight.
But I know there are NGO groups out there, some of which are actually good—many of which are very good, that track this sort of information and they submit it. I think the government can accept the information. Obviously, you have to take it for what it's worth. It might be reliable, it might not. But since intelligence is always a mosaic, you don't ever turn anything away. You may or may not give it weight, but you take in everything that you can to give yourself the best possible picture.
Q I'd just note the details of what this NGO is providing, such as: online forum threatening attacks on Democrat and Republican politicians. There's a call to occupy Federal buildings. There's mention of invading the Capitol Building. And there's, the last bullet there, online comments hoping for a civil war and a, quote, "'shot heard around the world,' in a reference to the beginnings of the American Revolution."
Do you know if—
A Yes, this—
Q Did this information have any impact on the Bureau or DOJ's preparations?
A It certainly caused concern, but we had had concern even before this email and before this reporting. So this is why the Acting AG wanted to move as many ​resources as we could into D.C.
So I think, for us, it just confirmed that we weren't overreacting, that, by bringing these units to D.C., we were acting appropriately in an abundance of caution to make sure that we had all available resources to address any threats that might arise that day.
Q Would this information received from the NGO, before it's provided to yourself, would it be confirmed by the FBI?
A I don't know that. Again, most of our reporting was coming from the FBI, so I put a lot more weight on what the FBI is telling us than anything from any other source. And, up till the day of the 6th, FBI was reporting that there were no credible threats against the identified targets.
Q So, just so I'm clear in terms of how information is flowing to you, this email from , is it clear that it's not FBI information?
A Oh, yeah, that's clear. I mean, he says right at the outset of that paragraph, "The SITE Intelligence Group, which is an American NGO," and then he indicates that that's where this is coming from. Doesn't mean it's wrong.
Q Got it.
A Right. But the FBI is what we rely on primarily.
Q Understood.
I want to move ahead to that day about 2 hours later. At 4 o'clock, you have another call with Michael Sherwin, which is at the bottom of exhibit 30, the notes from that call.
A Yes.
Q So, now, on this call, it appears to be yourself, , Mr. Rosen—is—
A Yes.
Q —and yourself, correct?
​A Right.
Q Now, at this time, it states, the second line there, "FBI will stand up SIOC."
A That's—
Q So I'm wondering if you can explain, at 12:21, there was no current plan to set up a SIOC, and then at 4 o'clock, it appears there is a decision to set up the SIOC. What, if anything, had changed?
A I don't know if it changed specifically in that window, because that's a DHS report that you're referencing, so there's probably a little bit of a time lag on their information.
But, initially, the FBI did not intend to stand up the SIOC. They felt that this was, as far as D.C. was concerned, a single city event and that we already had two command posts in the city, maybe three depending on how you look at it, and that there was not going to be a need to stand up the SIOC.
However, again, in an abundance of caution, Acting AG Rosen said, "You know what? Talk to Dave," meaning Dave Bowdich. "I really think we should be standing up the SIOC. Talk to Dave about that."
And I did. And I emphasized for him the AG's concern. We wanted to make sure that we did everything, even if we were acting in an abundance of caution. And he said, "Fine, we'll stand up the SIOC then."
So the decision was made to stand up the SIOC either on the 4th or prior to that, but we did stand up the SIOC before January 6th.
Q It looks like exhibit 37 reflects Mr. Bowdich's directions of setting up the SIOC. That's Monday, January 4th, at 9:19 p.m. Is that right?
A Yes. Yeah. So the email went out that night, and the SIOC was operational the next day, Tuesday, the 5th.
​Q Just generally speaking, what is the purpose of a SIOC, and when are they usually set up?
A FBI could give you a better idea of the criteria they were using. But a SIOC is a command center. So you have the advantage of having everyone sit in one room, whether it's DOD, DHS, Park Police, whatever it is. Everyone's in one room together, so you can do real-time coordination.
So that's the advantage. The disadvantage is that it takes time for information to filter up to these command centers.
And so it was certainly helpful to have them all across the street at the FBI, in the headquarters, sitting in one room, working together. And so the AG thought it would be helpful, and I think he was right about that.
We did have—
Q Was there—
A —several other command centers that were already planned and that became operational. So there was a command center at the Washington Field Office of the FBI.
There was also a command center at the Metro P.D. headquarters, which they call the JOC, J-O-C, Joint Operations Center. That was mostly virtual, but there were some people physically there.
The Washington Field Office was like a mini version of the JOC. It had—I'm sorry—a mini version of the SIOC, S-I-O-C, and it had a lot of different components represented in one room there.
And then DHS had their own command center, which was called the National Operations Center, the N-O-C, and you'll see that in some of the communications as well.
Q How were all of these different command centers communicating with each ​other, if you know?
A The people who worked it would be able to give you better insights to that. But there was a lot of overlap, for sure. But things generally filtered up from the Washington Field Office command post up to the SIOC. For our purposes, that was the most important thing for us within DOJ. But we had people staffed across the different centers so that everyone knew what everyone else was doing or trying to do.
Q And just so I'm clear, there's the FBI headquarters SIOC as well as the WFO SIOC?
A Right.
And, just to be clear in the nomenclature, so the SIOC, the Strategic Information Operations Center, that's solely at the FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue.
In their Washington Field Office, which is only a few blocks away, you had what we were calling the command post. And then, in the Metro P.D. headquarters, which is a few blocks away, you had the JOC, the Joint Operations Center.
Q Do you know if a SIOC was set up for the Million MAGA March in November or the one in December?