he had just read it. he had a very similar reaction to me. he was exasperated and told me that he told one of his administrator assistance to get jeff clark up here. he wanted to talk to him face- to-face about this. so come the three of us had a meeting. probably around 1800 that night in the deputy attorney general s conference room. one of the things you said to mr. clark is quote what you are doing is nothing less than the united states justice department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election. and i assume you convey that to him as well in your meeting? yes. in those very words. it was a very contentious meeting. yes. that was set amongst the whole thing. despite this contentious meeting, your strong reaction to the letter, did mr. clark continue to push his concept in the coming days? he did. yes. we had subsequent meetings and conversations. the acting ag probably had more contact with him than i did., between the
i told him what was going on. he said he would go into the white house to make sure he was at the meeting and he would be supporting the justice department s position as he had been doing consistently. three, i called steve, i was at the department. it was a sunday. there have been some reasons i needed to be there. i called him at home and asked him if you come in and go to the meeting. which he did. proved to be quite helpful. number four, i asked rich donahue and pat, who was previously my chief of staff, take it the departments senior leadership on a call and let them know what was going on. which they did then, eric called me to tell me that he was going to go to the meeting and that he would be supporting the department of justice position as well. so, i knew that the meeting was on course and that i would have a number of people supportive
28th and the second, when we had another in person meeting emma he clearly continued to move down this path. he began calling witnesses and apparently conducting investigations of his own he got a briefing from he and i about purported foreign intelligence interference. and we thought, perhaps, once it was explained to him that there was no basis for that part of his concern that he would retreat. but, instead he doubled down and said okay, so there is no foreign interference no foreign interference we learned that he had been calling witnesses and conducting investigations on his own, did you confront him? yes or what was his reaction? he got very defensive.
rational and under for the broad assertion met with mr. clark. i guess my hopes were disappointed. and mr. clark continued to express views that he thought there was fraud. even though he had not been a participant in the department s review of that. and that he was dissatisfied with the fact that we knew what we were doing. he had acknowledged that he had had further, i don t know if it was meetings or phone calls or what, but further discussions with the president, despite having, you know, a week earlier, said that if he, a, wouldn t do that and if he did, if you had an invitation to do that, he would let you or me know. so, it was a contentious meeting where we were
january 3rd? no. as he indicated, we had a meeting that afternoon that related to preparations for january 6th. i was at the department. i had no the department. it was a sunday afternoon. i was there in civilian clothes. i expected to have that meeting. have that meeting. i had no expectation of going to the white house. prior to the oval office meeting, did you set up a conference call with senior leadership at the department. if so, tell us about that call. yes. obviously, we scrambled that afternoon to prepare for the oval office meeting. we had discussed on several occasions the acting attorney general and i, whether we should expand the circle of people who knew what was going on. it was very important that steve knows and that s why we said to him on december 28, if mr. rosen were removed from the seat and the president did not immediately point someone else to serve as attorney general,