Capitol riot hearings told of Donald Trump’s ‘brazen’ takeover bid of Justice Department

The Capitol riots hearings have been told about Donald Trump’s bid to replace the head of the Justice Department with a loyalist.

Donald Trump’s efforts to replace the head of the Justice Department with a loyalist to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden have been heard at the Capitol riots hearings.

At the fifth hearing into its year-long probe of the January 2021 insurrection, the House of Representatives panel described Mr Trump’s pressure on officials to amplify his false claims that his presidency had been stolen by widespread voter fraud.

“Donald Trump didn’t just want the Justice Department to investigate. He wanted the Justice Department to help legitimise his lies, to baselessly call the election corrupt,” committee chairman Bennie Thompson said.

Politicians revisited tensions among government lawyers in the days leading to the violence, when Mr Trump tried to install his own man at the top of the department.

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

Rep. Bennie Thompson, Chairman of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

Underscoring the intensity of Mr Trump’s pressure on the department, acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen said that in late December 2020 and early January 2021, the president contacted him almost daily.

“At one point, he had raised the question of having a special counsel for election fraud … he raised whether the Justice Department would file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court,” Mr Rosen said.

“At a couple of junctures, there were questions about making public statements or about holding a press conference.”

The DOJ pursued a deluge of Mr Trump’s election fraud claims, but Mr Rosen said officials were presented with no evidence.

At that point Mr Trump began elevating a little-known mid-level department official named Jeffrey Clark, who embraced the outgoing president’s debunked theories.

Mr Clark prepared a letter to the Georgia state assembly, the hearing was told, stating falsely that the department had found evidence of widespread voter fraud, but other officials refused to sign it. Other letters had also been prepared for other states.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump gives the keynote address at the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this month. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

Mr Trump’s White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the committee in a videotaped deposition that he had informed Mr Clark that his plan would amount to “committing a felony.”

Mr Trump pushed to install Mr Clark as attorney general over Mr Rosen, and having Mr Clark reverse the department’s conclusion that there was no evidence of fraud that could sway the election.

But Mr Trump was forced to back off by a rebellion in the department’s senior ranks at a January 4 Oval Office meeting outlined in detail by the witnesses.

Mr Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, another high-ranking official named Steven Engel and White House counsel Pat Cipollone threatened to resign en masse, warning that they would take “hundreds and hundreds” of top federal prosecutors with them if Mr Trump went ahead with his plan.

“I made the point that Jeff Clark is not even competent to serve as the attorney general. He’s never been a criminal attorney. He’s never conducted a criminal investigation in his life,” Mr Donoghue recalled telling Mr Trump.

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

He also recalled warning Mr Clark that his mission to push Mr Trump’s election fraud claims was “nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election.”

MYSTERY TRUMP VIDEO TO BE SHOWN AT HEARINGS

The congressional panel investigating the US Capitol attacks announced a break from its blockbuster series of televised hearings after receiving a glut of new video footage of Donald Trump and his family from a documentary filmmaker.

Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters Thursday’s hearing on Trump’s alleged attempts to corrupt the Justice Department would be the last until two further hearings “later in July.” Mr Thompson did not elaborate on the timetable but said further hearings after the two in July were “always a possibility.”

“The timeline of the hearings is driven, and continues to be driven, by the investigation. The select committee continues to receive relevant new evidence that we think is very important to the investigation,” an aide to the panel said.

“It’s important that our members (and) investigators take the time needed to assess that information and figure out how we’re going to use that information as we continue to make our presentation to the American people.”

A transcript of a phone call between former U.S. President Donald Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, appears on a video screen during the fourth hearing on the January 6th investigation in Washington, DC. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

The new evidence includes documents from the National Archive and multiple new leads given to a tip line since the televised hearings began earlier in June.

The most prized haul though will be hours of footage from documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who was granted extensive access to Trump and his inner circle – including for interviews – before and after January 6.

Mr Holder began filming on the campaign trail in September 2020, according to Politico, and had substantial access to Mr Trump, Mr Trump’s grown-up children and his vice president Mike Pence for months.

Mr Holder is scheduled to speak to the committee.

According to Politico, Mr Thompson called the footage he had seen “important” but did not give anymore details.

Deadline revealed that the three-part series – Unprecedented – has been bought by Discovery+.

Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that in one interview Ivanka Trump appears to support her father’s pursuit of false claims of election fraud saying, “he has to take on this fight.”

Congress goes on a two-week recess for the July 4 holiday starting next week.

When politicians return in the second week of July, they are expected to dedicate at least some of the remaining hearings to the radicalisation of extremists who stormed the Capitol, as well as the culture of political violence on the far right.

Originally published as Capitol riot hearings told of Donald Trump’s ‘brazen’ takeover bid of Justice Department