there was one highlight of that second call with the vice president, which is mr. donoghue had gone to the rotunda of the capitol to be able to give firsthand account and was able to tell the folks on the call, including the vice president, that we thought 8:00 would work. did you speak to the president on january 6th? no. i spoke to a number of senior white house officials, but not the president. mr. donoghue, on january 6th, we know, from mr. rosen, that you helped in the effort to reconvene joint session the joint session, is that correct? yes, sir. we see here in a video that we re going to play now, you arriving with your security detail to help secure the capitol. mr. donoghue, 30 minutes after you arrived at the capitol, did you lead a briefing for the vice president? i m not sure exactly what the
not easy to repair them. so, i thought this was a really important issue to try to make sure that the justice department was able to stay on the right course. mr. donoghue, did you eventually tell the president that mass resignations would occur if he installed mr. clark and what the consequences would be? yes. so, this was in line with the president saying, what do i have to lose? and along those lines, he said, so, suppose i do this. suppose i replace him, jeff rosen, with him, jeff clark. what would you do? and i said, mr. president, i would resign immediately. i m not working one minute for this guy, who i just, you know, declared was completely incompetent. and so, the president immediately turned to mr. engel, and he said, steve, you wouldn t resign, would you? and he said, absolutely, i would, mr. president. you leave me no choice. and then i said, and we re not the only ones. no one cares if we resign.
a graveyard. again, the premise that which mr. donoghue has said, but that mr. clark could come in and take over the department of justice and do something different was just an absurd premise, and all he was doing, mr. clark, by putting himself forward, was blowing himself up and if the president were to have gone that course, it would have been a grievous error for the president as well. mr. cipollone, the white house counsel, told the committee that mr. engel s response had a noticeable impact on the president, that this was a turning point in the conversation. mr. donoghue, towards the end of this meeting, did the president ask you what was going to happen to mr. clark? he did. when we finally got to the i would say the last 15 minutes of the meeting, the president s decision was apparent. he announced that jeff clark tried to scrape his way back and ask the president to reconsider. the president doubled down, said, no, i ve made my decision. that s it. we re not going to
call, and all without hesitation said that they would resign. so, as part of the select committee s investigation, we found that while mr. rosen, mr. donoghue, and mr. engel were preparing for their meeting at the white house, jeff clark and the president were in constant communication beginning at 7:00 a.m. white house call logs obtained by the committee show that by 4:19 p.m. on january 3rd, the white house had already begun referring to mr. clark as the acting attorney general. as far as the white house was concerned, mr. clark was already at the top of the justice department. two hours later, doj leadership arrived at the white house. the select committee interviewed every person who was inside the room was inside the room during this sunday evening oval office meeting. mr. cipollone told the committee that he was, quote, unmistakably angry during the meeting, and that he, long with eric her
time frame was, but i did participate in the call and participate in briefing the vice president as well as the congressional leadership that night, yes. where d you conduct that call at? i was in an office. i m not entirely sure where it was. my detail found it because the acoustics in the rotunda were such that it wasn t really conductive to having a call. they found an office, i went to that office and i believe i participated in two phone calls, one at 1800, one at 1900 that night from that office. what time did you actually end up leaving the capitol? i waited until the senate was back in session, which i believe they were gavelled in a few minutes after 8:00 p.m. and once they were back in session, and we were confident that the entire facility was secured and cleared, that there were no individuals hiding in closets or under desks, that there were no ieds or other suspicious devices left behind, i left minutes later. i was probably gone by 8:30. and mr. donoghue, did y