# Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021)/12:06pm

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​[12:06 p.m.]
Mr. Donoghue. So it was clear to us that the President didn't fully understand the Department's role in election matters. And we repeatedly tried to explain to him that, essentially, what we do is not quality control for State-run elections. That's not our role. We have primarily two roles: One is investigations of criminal conduct. And the other is civil rights litigation and related matters.
So, if a particular group is discouraged from voting or precluded from voting or something like that, that's certainly a legitimate DOJ concern, and we would act on that. If there is criminal conduct, such as fraudulent ballots, and things of that nature, that's also very much a DOJ concern.
Above and beyond that, defects in State-run elections are largely out of our hands and out of our responsibility. We could understand why the candidate, the campaign, and others have a real interest in that and have a cognizable interest in that, and so they brought these dozens of suits in part pursuant to those interests.
But, in many instances, as the President complained of in this conversation and others, the merits were never reached because the courts were finding that the plaintiff bringing the case didn't have standing. And so we had gone through this in more detail in a subsequent meeting in the Oval Office, but the President couldn't understand how the United States Department of Justice did not have standing to bring civil suits that challenge the way States conducted their elections. In his view, the client of a United States Department of Justice was the American people.
And we tried to explain to him, that's not really the case. The client of the United States Department of Justice is the United States Government, not the people directly.
​And so he—from a layman's perspective, I certainly understand this—he believed that we should be bringing these suits and that, if we did, as a Department, bring these suits, they would get adjudicated more on the merits than get kicked out in standing.
Now, a number of these cases were addressed on the merits as well, and, ultimately, they were all unsuccessful, including one that went to the Supreme Court. But, similar to some of the others, the Supreme Court one was decided largely on the 7 standing ground. So the President didn't fully understand the role of the Department.
Ms. Cheney. Yeah. And I think it's very important to note that a number of the 9 cases were, in fact, decided on the merits. It has become sort of the talking point to assert they were all thrown out, and the merits weren't considered, but a number of the cases were decided on the merits.
And so, in terms of the President's—you know, the question about whether the President, quote, did not understand or did not care, was not troubled by. You know, it seems like you're making an assessment about the President's frame of mind in terms of why he was asking you to do what he was doing.
Mr. Donoghue. Well, I certainly don't want to speculate about what was really in his mind, but I can relay what he said and his demeanor. And, throughout, he appeared to believe, one, that he had won the election; two, that the results were somehow corrupted; and, three, that we, the Department, were not doing all that we should be doing to ensure that these matters were addressed. There was nothing he said or did anywhere in this process that indicated that he didn't really believe these things. Whether he did or not, I have no ability to say.
Ms. Cheney. Yeah, well, and I think we've seen there were a number of instances where you all would tell him the claim he was making was false, and he would later come back and make the same claim again.
​Mr. Donoghue. That's true.
Ms. Cheney. All right. That's all I have got, .
    BY :
Q Sorry. You'd think by now I would figure out the mute button.
Quickly going back to the request, this is the Commander in Chief. Right? This is the President of the United States, and when he says, "I would like to request, Rich, that you go to Fulton County," did you feel pressured to do that? Did you feel like "The Commander in Chief is making a request; I need to follow—we need to follow through with that"?
Tell me more about your calculus as to your ability to not pursue something that he requested?
A It was clear that the President wanted us to do some of these things, whether it was going to Fulton County and make a public announcement or something like that. I personally didn't feel tremendously pressured. I have been in the government a long time. I spent many years in the Army. I am the youngest of 12 children. I have very thick skin. The DAG, similarly, I think we had a very good understanding of our organization, the organization's mission, and how we were going to execute on it.
So the President could say, you know, what he wants. I suppose it would have become a more difficult situation if he actually directed us to do things we were not willing to do. But I think I know how that would have ended. So, you know, while he clearly wanted us to do these things, I think he was careful about the way he phrased it, and we were very firm on what we were going to do and not do. And so, frankly, it didn't bother me all that much. If I had left the Department, that would be fine.
Q Got it. And then, in reference to Clark, did you feel like that was pressure ​or that was meant to suggest to that "Hey, if you don't do it, others will"? Give me a sense of your reaction when he raised Jeff Clark's name?
A Certainly it was strange because it sort of came out of left field. And if there was anyone I thought he would have mentioned, it certainly wouldn't have been Jeff Clark. So I was a little taken aback by the reference. But this notion of "Well, maybe, I should just change leadership, people are telling me I should fire you two," it was sort of a matter of saying: Mr. President, go ahead. If you want to do it, that's fine. You should have the leadership you want. But understand it's not going to change anything.
So it didn't upset me. I didn't feel particularly pressured one way or the other. But this was a point he was making that informed the whole discussion, and the discussion had continued over the next couple of weeks.
Q Yeah, well, it sounds like, Mr. Donoghue, you didn't feel pressure. It's going to be reflected as we go forward in these other calls.
So, later that night, do you get a call, a followup call as he promised, from Congressman Perry, Scott Perry from Pennsylvania?
A I did. And I took notes, and those are reflected in tab 7.
Q Okay.
A I would note the outset—
Q Just the 28th, but was the call actually on the night of the 27th?
A It was. I misdated that. I apologize.
Q Well, just tell us about the conversation with Congressman Perry.
A Sure. I apologize for the handwriting. I was in the back of a moving vehicle at the time.
So, to Congressman Perry, Pennsylvania, in the left margin, it says: ​Approximately 1800, 6:00 p.m., in car en route to D.C. Congressman Perry said POTUS asked him to call. He is concerned about the election. He thinks that DOJ hasn't done its job on the election. He sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He can't understand why DOJ said nothing about Hunter Biden investigation prior to the election. And I noted that I had no response there. He said he likes Jeff Clark a lot. He thinks he would do something about this, meaning the election allegations. He said something about the FBI. And he talked about the Awan brothers, A-w-a-n, the House of Representatives IT scandal. I was vaguely aware of this, but I didn't know the details. He said: The IG was fired. We asked FBI to interview her. They told her not to bring anything to the interview. She felt like she was the one under investigation.
And he said: And I cite this only to show that you the FBI doesn't always do the right thing in all instances.
And he said there was a forensic accountant who was a State representative in Pennsylvania looking at open source info. All counties but three—meaning all counties but three have reported their results. Oh, I am sorry. He, the accountant, had looked at all counties but three. Then I have a parenthetical that says still working on those.
Then he said there were 205,000 more votes than voters and that this is clear fraud. He asked if he could send me evidence and send me information about this. I told him we would, of course, be willing to look at that, but, thus far, we haven't seen fraud on a scale to change the outcome in Pennsylvania.
On the left, I have—ask to send—oh, he asked for my email address, and he will send information that he has relevant to this. So I gave him my email address.
Q All right. So a couple of questions about this conversation, Mr. Donoghue. Again, Jeff Clark, does he talk about how he knows Jeff Clark? What's the basis of his statement that he likes Jeff Clark a lot? Did you have any context as to why ​Congressman Perry was touting Mr. Clark?
A No, and I did not ask.
Q Okay. And he is essentially repeating consistently with what you had heard earlier from the President about more votes, more voters than—or more votes than voters, right, more votes counted than registered voters? There's this sort of math issue that the President had raised that Mr. Perry is repeating?
A Yes, that's right.
Q Okay. And just a context point here, you're in the car. Did you have the DAG's detail, even though you weren't the Acting DAG there? They were driving you essentially back to D.C. from New York?
A Yes. That's right.
Q Okay. All right. So then do you get—you send him your email, and you get an email from Mr. Perry later. It looks like, turning to tab 8, Sunday night, December 27th, at about 8:30 p.m., he sends you an email that just says: Sir, as discussed. And it forwards this PowerPoint about this Pennsylvania data that he had referenced earlier. Do you recall receiving that, and did it pertain to what he had said on the call?
A Yes. That's right.
Q What did you do with that when you got this information from Mr. Perry?
A So I was in the back of the vehicle, and I only had an iPhone. So I couldn't really read this in detail anyway. But I opened it. I flipped through it a little bit. I could see it was sort of consistent with some of the points that he had raised in the call. And then I forwarded it to Scott Brady, who was the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Pennsylvania. Again, remember, it's the U.S. attorney who has the responsibility to investigate things in their jurisdiction if they deem appropriate. So I forwarded this ​entire packet to Scott. We had three U.S. attorneys in Pennsylvania: Middle, Eastern, and Western. I knew Scott the best. We had served on the AGAC together. They're all very good and very competent U.S. attorneys, but I knew Scott best of the three, and so I just sent it to him to be followed up on, if he even deemed it was worthy of following up.
Q Right. So, in tab 9, your email to Mr. Brady says: JFYI—which I assume is "just for your information"—regarding allegations about Pennsylvania voting irregularities, for whatever it may be worth. When you put that parenthetical at the end, "for whatever it may be worth," what was in your mind?
A I had no idea if there was anything to these allegations. Again, we just heard it for the first time that afternoon from the President. The President was very adamant, and Congressman Perry was very adamant that this was clear fraud; You didn't even really have to investigate; you could just look at the reporting on the government websites for the State of Pennsylvania, and it would be clear. But I didn't want Scott to believe that, because I was forwarding this to him, that I had formed any opinion about the reliability of these allegations.
Q I see. Did you talk to Scott about it once you sent him the email? Do you recall any phone conversation with him?
A I did. I think I talked to him that night. I'm not a hundred percent sure. But I had several conversations with him over the next couple of days. He said he would look into it. And he got to the bottom of it very quickly.
Q Tell us what he concluded.
A So the secretary of state certified roughly 5.25 million votes from Pennsylvania. And the website that they were referencing reported only about 5 million votes. However, Scott looked into it, and he got back to me within a day or two and ​said: Look, the reason that there is a difference between the 5.25 reported by the secretary of state and the State's election website is that the State election website is behind in reporting. There are four counties that have not yet submitted their totals. The secretary of state knows what those totals are, and we know what those totals are. And if you look at the four missing States and add up their votes, that leaves you with the 5.25. So it was a very simple explanation.
Q I am sorry. You said "States"; I believe, four missing counties.
A Yeah. I'm sorry. Four counties were not yet reported in the public-facing State database.
Q I see.
A And so Scott said: Look, when you add in the four missing counties, it totals up to the number that the secretary of state reported. That's it. That was a completely logical, rational explanation and obviously addressed the concerns about whether there was fraud on that point in Pennsylvania.
Q All right. So, Mr. Donoghue, just so sort of generally with this or with others, when you do cycle through one of these allegations and determine that it's meritless, do you convey that up the chain to Mr. Rosen or ultimately to the White House? I mean, if the President of the United States had said, "Hey, this is outrageous," you look into it and find it's actually easily explained, what, if any, effort do you make to kind of pass that conclusion along to the White House?
A I reported all these results to the Acting Attorney General. We did not report them to the White House. We didn't, you know, say, "Okay, we have got to call over there and tell the President we got to the bottom of it," or anything like that. They may come up in subsequent conversations because the President then raises them. We're able to say: No. We looked into it that, and there's nothing to it.
​But we weren't reporting back to the White House simply because the President mentioned some allegations.
Q I see. It wouldn't be consistent with protocol for you to go back to the President every time something that comes up in a discussion is investigated or resolved?
A He didn't instruct us to do that, and we weren't going to do it. So.
Q Yeah. All right. I want to turn your attention, if you can now to exhibit 10, which we get back into Mr. Clark. The next day, December 28th, you and Mr. Rosen get an email from Mr. Clark, and he is asking for two urgent action items. Tell us about this email, the two actions that he requested, and what your response was.
A Right. So DAG Rosen and I spoke, I think, probably several times on the 27th and certainly the 28th because that was a Monday. DAG Rosen and Jeff Clark had a long personal and professional relationship. They had known each other for decades. They had worked at the same law firm together. He knew Jeff Clark much better than I did. And, you know, we discussed why Jeff Clark's name was coming up, why it was coming from the President, why it was coming from this Congressman. And Jeff Rosen said: Well, look, I am going to talk to Jeff Clark to find out what's going on here. We got to get to the bottom of this.
So I think he had conversations with Jeff Clark earlier on the 28th. They preceded this email, which came fairly late in the day. I did not talk to Jeff Clark before this.
So, at 4:40, I received this email from Jeff Clark. I read it. I read the attachment. I had to read it more than once to make sure I really understood what he was proposing. And then I drafted a response. I don't know where Jeff Rosen was at this point, but I went to his office, and he wasn't there. So I didn't get to discuss my response with him before I sent it. But I sent it out. And then I saw him shortly ​afterward, and he was very upset by Jeff Clark's request. And he said that he had instructed one of his administrative support personnel to get Jeff Clark in his conference room. He was—he was a little angry. And he said: I want him down here. We need to talk to this guy and find out what's going on.
So I think there's some emails that show up.
Q Yeah. And I don't want to jump ahead too much, Mr. Donoghue, because I want to get to that conversation. But let's go back to Mr. Clark's email. The first thing he asks of you is: I would like to have your authorization—"you" meaning you and Mr. Rosen—to get a classified briefing tomorrow from ODNI led by DNI Ratcliffe on foreign election interference issues. And he mentions activating the IEEPA and 2018 EO powers about the Dominion machine access to the internet through a smart thermostat with a net connection trail leading back to China. He is essentially asking if you can get a briefing about this allegation of Chinese control of Dominion machines through a thermostat. Did that strike you as odd, and what was your reaction to that specific request?
A Yes, it struck me as odd. I won't go into details, but we received briefing about what the IC, the intelligence community, knew about the election in advance. This was inconsistent with what we had been told. And I had not heard anything about smart thermostats and internet connections leading back to China and things like that. So the whole thing struck me as very odd.
Q Yeah, and that Mr. Clark, the head—acting head of the Civil Division is asking for a classified briefing with the Director of National Intelligence about this allegation. That also procedurally was odd?
A Yes.
Q Okay. He also then—the second ask is this draft letter, which I believe is ​attached to the email that he sends you and Mr. Rosen. And that letter is a draft letter that you and Mr. Rosen and he, Mr. Clark, would sign to the Governor, the Speaker of the House, and the president pro tempore of the Georgia legislature, essentially asking them to stand down and not certify the results of their election. How did that request strike you, and what did you do about it?
A It struck me as very strange and somewhat alarming. And, as I said, I had to read it more than once to make sure I understood what he was proposing here. It was completely inconsistent with the Department's role, generally. And it was inconsistent with what our investigations, to date, had revealed. And so I think I made my views known in the email response I sent to him.
Q Yeah, which we'll get to. To be clear, he asks that—a version of this letter be sent to each relevant State. So was his request to send this letter, drafted for Georgia, not just to Georgia officials but to officials in other States where there had been allegations of election fraud?
A Yes. That was my understanding of his proposal.
Q All right. He writes that he put it together quickly—"it" being the letter—but other messages suggest that it may have been drafted by Ken Klukowski. Do you know Ken Klukowski and what his role may have been within the Department's Civil Division at that time?
A No. I don't.
Q Okay. Did you know whether or not Mr. Clark was talking to anyone else in the Department about this letter or other election issues?
A No. I had no reason to think that.
Q All right. So you respond, Mr. Donoghue. We get to your response, which is tab 11. You drafted a pretty comprehensive, specific response reflecting your ​frustration on the 28th, just about a little over an hour later, at 5:50. I won't ask you to read it to us, but just summarize for us your overall reaction and what's reflected in the email.
A I tried to make it clear to him that this is not the Department's role. Again, we don't do quality control for State elections. The States run the elections. We investigate crimes, and we look at civil rights matters. So I tried to make it clear to him that this is simply not our role, to recommend to the States what they do and, secondly, that we have conducted investigations and that the factual claim he was making here was simply not accurate. And so I reminded him that AG Barr had made public statements on this point, less than a week prior, or, I guess, exactly a week prior was the last time he had made some public statements, and that this was just completely unacceptable and not anything that I would ever sign. And I know Jeff Clark—or Jeff Rosen, rather, had the same response.
Q You say in the first paragraph: There's no chance that I would sign this letter or anything remotely like this. You sort of lead with the conclusion. You then, in the first paragraph, challenge his factual assumptions. You said: The investigations that I am aware of relate to suspicions of misconduct that are of such a small scale that it would simply not impact the outcome of the election. AG Barr made that clear to the public only last week, and I am not aware of intervening developments that would change that conclusion.
So, setting aside whether it would be appropriate for the Department to tell a State what to do, you're challenging—is it fair to say you're challenging the factual basis included in his letter to the State official?
A That's right. And he himself, Jeff Clark, would have no way of knowing what investigations we had conducted or not because he was not involved in election ​matters.
Q Right. You then, in the second paragraph, Mr. Donoghue, you say: I cannot imagine a scenario in which the Department would recommend that a State would assemble its legislature to determine whether already certified election results should somehow be overridden by legislative action. This would be a grave step for the Department to take and could have tremendous constitutional, political, and social ramifications for the country.
Is that your sort of procedural response here that this is just not the Department's role to be quality control for State elections and tell a State legislature what to do?
A Yes. That's the point I was making. Yes.
Q All right. So, when you and Mr. Rosen get this letter, you compose the response. You indicated previously that Mr. Rosen essentially summons Mr. Clark up to the 5th floor for a face-to-face meeting. Does that meeting then occur?
A Yes. He is on the 4th floor. But, yes, in the DAG conference on the 4th floor.
Q Okay. So you are personally present, Mr. Donoghue, for that meeting between Clark and Rosen?
A Yes. It was the three of us.
Q Tell us about the conversation there with Mr. Clark.
A Mr. Clark explained that he had been looking at some of these allegations on his own, that he had information, that he had concerns about the reliability of the outcome of the election. He mentioned this smart thermostat thing. It was clear that he had been reading some affidavits that were attached to some of the civil filings in some of the cases that were pending or already dismissed around the country. He had various theories that seemed to be derived from the internet about why the outcome of ​the election was in question. And he wanted, one, the briefing; and, two, he was very insistent about sending this letter.
So the conversation was a very difficult and contentious conversation. He made it clear at some point that he had been in the Oval Office and spoken to the President, which surprised me, to say the least. I told him that he had violated the White House contacts policy. His response to that was something to the effect of "It's a policy, there's a lot more at stake here than a policy." And I reminded him that I was his boss at that point and that he was not to do that again and that he was making these comments and sending emails and drafting letters without the knowledge of what the Department had actually done in terms of investigations, that he was being reckless. And I recall toward the end saying: What you're proposing is nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a Presidential election.
And his answer was: I think a lot of people have meddled in this election.
It got fairly contentious. As I said, Jeff Rosen and Jeff Clark have known each other for a long time, and he was sort of—Jeff Rosen was, of course, the boss for both of us. So he was going to make these decisions. But he was also a little bit more of the peacemaker in this conversation. I was angry, and he tried to find a way forward and said: Well, look, Jeff, if you want a briefing, if you have the appropriate clearances to get such a briefing, then you can get it. But you're going to see that the IC, the intelligence community, will not support these allegations. And, with regard to the letter, you know, there is no reason to send such a letter. It's not supported by the investigations. It's not supported by the evidence.
He said: Rich knows what the investigations are. He knows this much better than you do. You haven't had the benefit of that. So you have to understand that we, Jeff Rosen and I, have a much better understanding of what's going on here, and we have ​a much better understanding of why there's no way we can send a letter like this.
That's generally how the conversation went.
Q I see. So, you, it sounds, like, Mr. Donoghue, to paraphrase, are the one very directly chastising, criticizing Mr. Clark, calling out the policy violation, and directing him to stand down whereas Mr. Rosen is more of a trying to find a way forward or trying to somehow placate Mr. Clark?
A Yes. I wouldn't say "placate" him because, as I said, DAG Rosen was our boss, and he was in charge of the situation. He was making the right decisions. I was more of the mind of just shutting Jeff Clark down. But he thought it was more appropriate to explain to him why he was wrong and move forward that way.
Q Did you tell him to focus on his portfolio and only his portfolio?
A Yes. I said he was—he was outside his lane. He had no responsibility for this stuff. He had no knowledge of this stuff. He'd never conducted an election investigation or any criminal investigation in his life. And he had no business sticking his nose into these matters when he had the Civil Division and those responsibilities.
Q Did you ask him why Congressman Perry was mentioning his name or was suggesting, saying things about him in your phone conversation?
A I recall saying at some point basically: Why the hell are we hearing your name from the President of the United States and a Congressman? What is going on?
And I was focused much more on the President than the Congressman. And that's when he relayed that he had been in contact with the President; he had been in the Oval Office. He didn't explain how he got there or exactly when he was there. Obviously, it was within the last few days, but I was focused much more on the President than on Congressman Perry.
Q Did the subject in this conversation, Mr. Donoghue, of the President ​contemplating a leadership change come up? Did Mr. Clark raise that, or did you or Mr. Rosen?
A Mr. Clark did raise it in a somewhat removed fashion. And he said something to the effect of "Well, you know, the President's thinking about leadership here and whether we have the right leadership for these trying times," or something to that effect. It's not an exact quote. But he made certainly an oblique reference to the fact that there might be a leadership change and that he would be a part of that.
Q Yeah. All right. And then is that what prompted you to talk about the White House contact policy or direct him to have no further contact with the President?
A I said that prior to that because, again, I asked: Why are we hearing your name from the President?
And then he said: Well, because I talked to the President. I met with the President in the Oval Office, and he is very concerned about these things, and I am very concerned about these things, and I think the Department should be very concerned about these things.
Q So how does the meeting end? Do you have a sense that he understands the direction that you have provided or not and that you expect further problems?
A One of the takeaways from the meeting was that Acting AG Rosen had given him permission to get the DNI brief, provided he had the appropriate security clearances, which he said he did. So that, apparently, was going to happen. And then we were going to sort of reconvene later to determine and what, if anything else, should be done once Jeff Clark had the benefit of that briefing.
Q Okay. But fair to say it ends without a sort of a universal understanding, hey, no apology, no "okay, I got it going forward," but continued to be contention?
A Yes. There was definitely still a contentious situation as the meeting ​ended.
Q So, after the meeting, you felt the need to notify Steve Engel of the conversation. Is that right?
A Correct.
Q Tab 12 is an email that you send at 11:41 that night, Mr. Donoghue, to Mr. Engel where you say: Please come to my office so I can read you into some antics that could potentially end up on your radar.
Tell me what you meant when you told Mr. Engel about antics and things that could potentially end up in―and, again, Mr. Engel is the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, OLC, at the time. Why did you feel it necessary to loop him in?
A When AG Barr left and Acting AG Rosen took over, we changed the meeting schedule a little bit. And we started having 9 a.m. meetings with different staff members in DAG Rosen's conference room. Steve was one of the people who was invited to the meeting every day. Other people rotated.
If you look at the chain of succession within the Department, it goes through a list of people who become the Acting Attorney General in the absence of people above them on the list. When you go through that list, you remove anyone who is in an acting position.
So, for instance, the Solicitor General is fairly high on that list. But because the Solicitor General had left, there was an Acting Solicitor General; you remove that person from the list. And, when you go down that list, you see that if the President or―well, I'll say if the President fired Acting AG Rosen, the next person to move into the Acting AG seat, absent some other action by the President, would be Steve Engel. Steve was the Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General in charge of OLC.
And so I had a concern at this point that there could be an immediate leadership ​change; and, if that happens, Steve would end up in the seat, and Steve would have no idea what's going on. So I felt that, although DAG Rosen and I were keeping this close hold, that Steve needed to know what was going on in case that developed.
Q Well, let me stop there and see, Ms. Cheney, if you have any questions about this series of events.
Ms. Cheney. I don't. Thank you.
    BY :
Q You know, Greg, I would like to keep going a little bit longer, if that's okay.
Mr. Donoghue, are you good? I am getting closer to the end. But I—maybe I thought I might do another couple of meetings and stop before we get to the January 3rd White House meeting, and maybe, at that point, we'll take a lunch break. But, if you are comfortable, I would like to keep going for a little while longer before we stop.
A I'm fine. I would like to get through as much as this as we can.
Q I appreciate that. All right. Well, then, let's turn then to the White House meeting that happens the next day, December the 29th. That's another meeting in which you took notes. This is not a meeting with the President; this is a meeting with the chief of staff. And, well, you tell us. Is there a meeting at the White House that you attend on December the 29th?
A Yes. It was in the Chief of Staff's Office. That's the only time I have been to the Chief of Staff's Office. I think it was in the afternoon. I don't remember, specifically. But we went over there. DAG Rosen and I went over there, and Steve Engel was also over there. I think Steve met us over at the White House. He didn't travel with us. But we all sat in the Chief of Staff's Office. We had a number of things to discuss, some of which related to the election, some of which did not, some of which just related to normal administrative or, I should say, administration transition matters.
​Q Got it.
A So I took these notes out in the open in front of the chief of staff—he knew I was taking notes. And they reflect—
Q —reference Mark Martin and John Eastman. Tell me a little bit about them, what the discussion was.
A There was a discussion at this point about what we were calling the original jurisdiction case. And you see number four there on my list. It says: Original J—meaning jurisdiction—case. We told the chief of staff the United States does not have standing. His response was DOJ should talk to the Olsens. And, in parenthetical, I have: attorneys who filed a similar case.
And then the arrow up to the top, which says Mark Martin and John Eastman, they were attorneys of some sort that had, according to the chief of staff, some views or insights about whether or not this original jurisdiction case could be brought at the Supreme Court.
Q All right. And it says: P trusts them. Or is this another reference to the President actually having some relationship with Mr. Martin and Mr. Eastman?
A Yes. President trusts their view.
Q I see. Okay. All right. And is Mr. Engel, is he there in part because there's a discussion of whether the Department has standing to file a case in the Supreme Court, and that would be a matter in which OLC would be expected to weigh in?
A Yes. I think that makes sense. I think Steve was over at the White House, perhaps talking to or meeting with the White House counsel previously, and he sort of just rolled into this meeting when we got over there.
Q All right. We'll come back to the possibility of a Supreme Court filing. But there are two other issues discussed reflected in your notes on Pennsylvania election ​issue and Arturo D'Elio. Tell us, if you can, first about the Pennsylvania issue reflected there in your notes?
A So the Pennsylvania issue is the delta between the certified votes reported and the public-facing State election database. I have already explained all of this.
Q Okay.
A Apparently, at this point, December 29th, we didn't have the final answer from Scott Brady as to why that difference existed. So this is the chief of staff saying: You guys know about this. Right?
And we said, essentially: Yes, you know, we heard about it.
And I wrote here: Advised that we are looking at the claim that certifications exceeded number of votes cast. So, obviously, at that point, Scott had not given us the explanation.
Q Got it. All right. And then the last reference to the Italian matter?
ASo this is the first we heard of this. He gave me the name Arturo D'Elio, D-'-E-l-i-o. I later realized that was a misspelling, and it should be D'Elia, D-'-E-l-i-a. This was an allegation, and it was convoluted from the start, and the chief of staff was clear that he didn't understand this allegation fully, but he wanted to pass it along for whatever we thought it was worth. And the allegation had something to do with an Italian company called Leonardo and a facility they had in Italy, the Pesara, P-e-s-a-r-a, facility, and that this gentleman Mr. D'Elia was somehow under the protection of some Italian Government agency, that a letter had been sent about his company. And there was some claim made that the company was somehow involved in changing votes in the 2020 U.S. election. The claim also in the letter was that this had been coordinated at least with the knowledge of CIA officers stationed in the Embassy in Rome―I know where the Embassy is in Rome―and that there was an American subsidiary of Leonardo ​called U.S. Aerospace Partners that might have some information about this.
So this was a very colluded—I am sorry, convoluted explanation of some allegation which we were hearing for the first time. And the chief of staff said he wanted to make sure we were aware of it.
Q But, when the chief of staff conveyed this to you, Mr. Donoghue, was it your impression that he believed this, or he was saying, "Hey, I just want you to be aware of this for whatever its worth," much like when you were passing something along to the U.S. attorney in Michigan? Give us your sense as to how the chief of staff actually credited or didn't this potential allegation?
A My sense was that these things were getting dumped on the chief of staff's desk, and he wanted to move them off his desk, and he wanted to be able to say: I referred that to the Department.
He wasn't vouching for any of this. He was just passing along whatever this information was. It wasn't clear to me what the source of the information was or anything else.
Q Okay. And then tell us what happened with respect to the Italian allegation. Was it looked at? I mean, tab 14 is the actual—it looks like the actual letters in Italian and in English in which these allegations are documented. Is that correct?
A Right.
Q Fourteen. So tell us what you did with this information about the Italian?
A So the Acting Attorney General said, you know: We'll look at it. We'll determine whether there's anything to be done about this. Obviously, it sounded very farfetched to begin with. We didn't promise we would do any sort of investigation. We just said we would take the information and deal with it.
​I don't know if it was in the room itself or perhaps on the ride back, but Acting AG Rosen told me: Just run this guy's name and see if he shows up anywhere. Let's find out if we know anything about this guy. Because his name is not even on those letters, you'll notice. The signature block for the letters is a totally different name.
Q Right.
A So this whole thing was very confusing. But you'll see in the left there, I have: J. Demers, D-e-m-e-r-s, working on this, 12/29/20. So what we did was, when we got back to the Department, I called John Demers, who was the AAG for the National Security Division, and I said: John, can you just run this name and see if there's anything that we know about such an individual?
I think I asked the FBI to do the same. On my own, I googled the name and Leonardo, and I learned that, first, the name was misspelled. It should be D-'-E-l-i-a, but that there was some Italian press releases relating to the arrest of Mr. D'Elia in Italy, I believe, in December for a criminal conduct that related to a scheme under which he purportedly exfiltrated data from his company, Leonardo. And this was criminal conduct that, according to the public reporting, had gone on between 2015 to 2017. So it appeared to me that this individual was actually in custody in Italy facing criminal charges.
Q Which further cast doubt on his credibility with respect to these voting machines and interference in the election?
A Yes, it appeared that this was someone who was in a difficult situation in Italy, and perhaps he or someone working on his behalf were trying to help him out of that situation.
Q Yeah. Any further effort to investigate it, or did it stop at that point when you found out that information about the purported source?
​A A It stopped at that point. I think the FBI got back to me with either no information or similar information saying this guy has got a bunch of issues, and he is not a reliable source of information. I don't remember exactly, but I was ahead of them just by googling the guy.
Q Okay. All right. The other followup from the December 29th meeting involves the Supreme Court case. I want to go back to that. After the meeting in Mr. Meadows' office, do you get an email from the President's assistant, Molly Michael, with a draft complaint? Typically—we're at tab 15—
A I don't know if it was before or after, frankly. I see her email as 11:17 on the 29th. That might have come after; it might have come before this meeting. I don't remember exactly when the meeting was in the Chief of Staff's Office on the 29th, but it's the same day.
Q Okay. And is it right, Mr. Donoghue, that she forwards you, whether it was before or after the meeting in Meadows' office, a draft complaint, the United States of America versus several States, the complaint that was the subject of the original jurisdiction discussion that you just referenced?
A Yes. That's right.
Q So tell us, first of all, substantively, in your view, was—did Department of Justice have standing to bring—would the Department have had standing to bring this case in the Supreme Court?
A Initially, when this was brought up, I did not know. I suspected not, but I didn't know. And so we asked both OLC, the Office of Legal Counsel, and OSG, the Office of Solicitor General to look at the standing issue. There were a lot of other issues, obviously, too, but your initial question is, would we even have standing?
Q Right.
​A And they both concluded no, and they reported back as to why the government did not have standing to bring such a case in their view.
Q All right. It looks like Mr. Engel actually sends you, at tab 19—if you could just flip ahead to that—an actual summary of—it's called "Evaluation of Potential Original-Jurisdiction Suit in the Supreme Court." Does that summarize OLC's view that there is no standing to bring this case into the Supreme Court?
A Yes. That was Steve's response that he gave us shortly after we asked him to look at it.
Q This specifically concludes: Mr. Donoghue, there's no legal basis to this bring this lawsuit. We cannot ethically file a suit without a legal basis. And we are certain that, if we did so, the Justices would promptly dismiss it. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply does not know the law, much less the Supreme Court. If there were a legal mechanism available, we would pursue it, but there is not. And this case is definitely not it.
Fairly strong words from OLC that there is just no ambiguity about the standing issue here. Is that fair to say? That summarizes Mr. Engel and the Department's position?
A Yes. That's fair to say that that was his position. We, basically, adopted it. Steve's an excellent lawyer, and I trusted that his analysis was correct.
Q And he says a little bit further down: The United States as a government does not have any standing to challenge the States, whether the States complied with their State electoral procedures, essentially, the Federal Government can't reach into the State and evaluate whether the State, in fact, complied with their own State law.
A Right. And this gets back to the issue that we do not conduct quality control for State elections.
​Q Right. You mentioned that this also was sent to the Solicitor General. Was the view of the Solicitor General consistent with the OLC view?
A Yes. They were very similar.
Q All right. Now, despite that, did you have some one conversation with one of the lawyers who purported to be calling on behalf of the President about the Department's position on this litigation?
A Yes. The DAG and I had a conversation with him on December 30th.
Q Tell us about that. I think your notes of that conversation are at tab 16.
A Right. So just a clarification here. The date is connect. The name I have at the top is not. It says: DAG call with Ken Kohl. Ken Kohl was the first assistant in the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office. We were dealing with Ken on preparation for January 6th, which was going on at the same time. And we were literally doing one call about January 6th and another call about these election matters. We were bouncing back and forth. And so I wrote down "Ken Kohl" I think because I just hung up the phone from Ken Kohl. But that's incorrect, and this conversation was with Kurt Olsen, one of the attorneys that the chief of staff had referenced when we were in his office on the 29th.
Q I see. So this is a conversation with Kurt Olsen, not Ken Kohl?
A Correct.
Q Okay. Tell us about the conversation.
A Mr. Olsen had been trying to get in contact with the Deputy Attorney General, the Acting AG for a day or two. He was making calls and sending emails to his chief of staff, John Moran, repeatedly, trying to get a meeting. The Acting Attorney General said: I'm not meeting with this guy.
Ultimately, he decided to take a phone call from him. And so that call happened ​on the evening of the 30th. And my notes reflect what happened there. It was on speakerphone in the Deputy Attorney General's Office. I was sitting there for the entire conversation. Essentially, the gist of it is that Mr. Olsen wanted to know whether or not the Department was going to file this complaint against the States. And the DAG said flat out: I'm not going to discuss that with you. We have your draft. We're looking at it. We have questions about this theory. For example, whether the United States would ever have standing to bring such a claim. And we're having our experts in OSG and the Civil Division looking at it. But I'm not going to discuss that with you. You're private counsel, and it's not appropriate for the Justice Department to be discussing what it may or may not do with outside counsel.
Q Is there a discussion then about who Mr. Olsen represents?
A Yes. He said: I'm acting at the direction of the President which I wrote it down as a quote. His role wasn't entirely clear to us so that the Deputy AG asked him: Is he your client?
And he gave a curious response. He said: I have made my representation to you on that.
I don't know if that meant he was his client or not, but he said he would be reporting back to the President on the conversation. And the DAG said: You can report to whoever you want. We're not going to discuss this with you.
And then Mr. Olsen ended it by saying: This is a historic moment. The election has been stolen. We need to act to save the Republic.
And the Deputy AG said, "Look, we understand your perspective; we'll make our own decision on this; it's not appropriate for us to discuss this with you," and hung up the phone.
Q All right. So a similar question here, Mr. Donoghue, to what I asked you ​before about the President making requests. You're getting a call here from a lawyer who says: I am acting at the direction of the President.
Did that create in you or Mr. Rosen any pressure or any feeling that this was coming from your boss at the White House, that you should take some official action as a result of that desire to file this litigation?
A Frankly, from my perspective, it didn't change much. We had explained, and we will explain again to the President, that this is just not the Department's role. Clearly, other people thought otherwise. And I understood, at least from the President's perspective as a nonlawyer, why you would believe that the United States Justice Department must have standing to bring a case that challenges the way a State conducted its election. That made perfect sense to me from a layman's point of view. But lawyers, particularly lawyers who drafted complaints and have purportedly done the research on this stuff, should understand otherwise.
Q Yeah. The other subject of that discussion in the Chief of Staff's Office was the Pennsylvania allegations. Did you ever have any contact with the State senator, Mastriano, who is reflected in your notes? Did he ever call you, or did you have any conversation about something that happened in the Pennsylvania election?
A I don't recall as I sit here if he called me. I do distinctly remember the conversation with Congressman Perry. I believe Mastriano sent me either some emails or some letters or something to that effect. I remember getting something from him along similar lines, but it was all sort of balled up with what Congressman Perry was talking about. And I don't recollect speaking to Mastriano, but I may have.
Q And the allegation there was about more votes counted than registered voters, which you were able to, with Mr. Brady as U.S. attorney, essentially, rebut. Is that right?
​A Yes, but it went beyond. They had some claims in Pennsylvania about how, essentially, the procedures of the election were changed by State officials and not changed by the State legislature. And their claim was that the Constitution required that the State elections be conducted in accordance with the rules set by the State legislature. That's fine. There may or may not have been merit to that claim, but it wasn't the Department's issue. We had no role in that. And we explained that repeatedly to people, including the President, said that's something for the campaign to pursue in civil actions on their own. The United States Justice Department doesn't come in and file suits because the States are not complying with their own election laws, if that was even the case.
Q Yeah. All right. I just have another couple of things along the lines of his chief of staff sending you things. Is it fair to say, Mr. Donoghue, that after that meeting in person in his office, you got a few additional things sent by email from Mr. Meadows with allegations that he wanted you and others at the Department to be aware of?
A Yes, they primarily went to the Acting Attorney General, and then he would forward some of them to me, but you can see a series of emails.
Q Yeah. Let's turn first to exhibit 20, which is an email that comes to Mr. Rosen, as you said, from Mr. Meadows, that is forwarding something from Cleta Mitchell. Do you know who Cleta Mitchell is?
A I don't know who that is, but I know that name was associated with the President's legal team and that she was involved in filing some of these cases around the country at this time.
Q All right. And Mr. Meadows asked Mr. Rosen: Can you have your team look into the allegations of wrongdoing, only the alleged fraudulent activity?
Do you remember seeing that and getting that request from Mr. Meadows that ​you somehow look into what is attached to that message?
A Yes. I don't specifically remember as I sit here whether the DAG referred that or forwarded that email to me or not, but I do remember seeing this.
Q Okay. And just tell us, as you have with the others, Mr. Donoghue, what, if any, action did you or others in the Department take upon receipt of this—looks like it's a draft complaint or, actually, an actual complaint from a case in Georgia involving similar allegations about election fraud in that State?
A I think I looked through the complaint. I probably didn't read it word for word, but I think I looked through it to get an idea of whether this was anything that the Department would have any role in. So, again, if they're complaining about the State not complying with its own election laws, that's not an issue for the Department. If they're making allegations of criminal misconduct, that might be an issue for the Department. And so I went through the complaint. I don't remember exactly what's in here, but I don't know if I referred it to the U.S. attorney in Atlanta or not. But I had been talking to the U.S. attorney in Atlanta throughout this time period about different allegations relating to purported election fraud in Georgia. So I don't know if I forwarded this to him or just discussed it with him or what the case might be.
Q Okay.
Mr. Meadows then sends another message. This is now exhibit 21, and it's just simply a YouTube link. This one involves a Rome satellite issue. Do you remember the discussions about Brad Johnson, Rome, satellites, servers, and the YouTube link between you and Mr. Rosen?
A Yes. I do. This was on January 1st. It was a holiday. I was in my apartment in Washington. There were a series of calls and emails throughout that day. AG—Acting AG Rosen was keeping me updated on context. He was getting, and he ​forwarded an email chain to me, not this one but a similar one, that had that YouTube link in it.
Q On exhibit 22, Mr. Donoghue, we actually get your response when Mr. Rosen forwards it to you. You say simply: Pure insanity.
What did you mean by that?