department if donald trump replaced rosen with jeffrey clark, that loyalist who was there to help him overturn the election. jeffrey clark, former justice department official, whose home was just searched by federal investigators. the committee says it s going to take us inside a heated oval office meeting on january 3rd when today s witnesses confronted trump over his threat to put clark in charge of the justice department until trump eventually backed down. playing a leading role in today s hearing, congressman adam kinzinger of illinois, one of only two republicans on the panel. all this comes after the select committee deposed filmmaker alex holder behind closed doors this morning about his documentary, which features never-before-seen interviews with trump and me members of his inner circle, both before and after january 6th. cnn has gotten first look at the documentary. we ve been sharing some of these key clips. as the committee is about to focus on jeffrey clark, let
being appointed as the attorney general and sending a letter to the states embracing the lie that there was widespread fraud and demanding the states appoint these fraudulent a like tors this throwing the election into disarray and trump a new ring so he can stay as president. we ve seen these witnesses in brief snippets in taped testimony. to hear them and see them live, especially weeks leading up to but actually that meeting, what appears to be an unbelievably dramatic consequential meeting in the oval office where they stop the president from firing them, at the justice department, and put jeffrey clark into actually execute his wishes. that will be fascinating. the other thing is who is going to be questioning them? it will be the first time we
our witnesses, mr. rosen, mr. donahue and mr. engels stood firm. they understood that their oath was to the constitution and not to the personal or political interests of the president. the president, and his allies, became aware with legal challenges exhausted and electoral votes certified, their only hope would be a last- ditch scheme to prevent congress from certifying the win is throwing the entire system into constitutional chaos. the present one that the department to sow doubt in the legitimacy of the election. to empower his followers and members of congress to take action. if the department could lend its credibility to the conspiracies, people would have the justification they needed to spread the big lie. so president trump one of the department of justice to say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the
who know better, not just the ones who voted to commit this fraud by overturning the elections in arizona and pennsylvania, but ones who didn t go that far but still are pretending this was no big deal. this was an undemocratic authoritarian move by donald trump and his minions, and it very easily could have worked if you had had 10 to 20 different republican officials in different in those positions. you re talking about the deafening sound of silence. yeah. especially among republican leaders who are still on capitol hill. and what you just described and what we re going to continue to see today is this committee s attempt to puncture that silence. and to make republicans, to shake them and say, you have to listen to your fellow republicans who are at the highest levels of the federal government in the justice department, who were on the brink, almost physically holding up the democracy against
different view. why should i do that? that is how the discussion went. jeff clark was proposing that jeff rosen be replaced by jeff clark. and i thought the proposal was asinine. what are clark s reported basing thi s that why it was in the president s interest for him to step in? what would he do? how would things change according to mister matt clark in the meeting? he said to the president, if he was put into the sea, conduct real investigations that would uncover widespread fraud. he would send out a letter he had drafted and that this was a last opportunity to set things straight with this deceptive election. and, he could do it