Capitol riot hearing: lawyers quit amid Trump pressure

• Trump’s claims of voting fraud have no support, according to officials of the Justice Department.
• The attorneys claimed, president’s strategy to make up for his defeat was “a murder-suicide pact”.
• A committee is looking at last year’s disturbance at the US Capitol as a potential coup attempt.

According to testimony given to a congressional inquiry, US government lawyers threatened to resign collectively as then-President Donald Trump harassed them almost daily to assist in overturning his 2020 election loss.

Trump’s claims of widespread voting fraud have no support, according to officials from the Justice Department.

Additionally, the attorneys claimed that the president’s strategy to make up for his defeat in crucial states was “a murder-suicide pact.”

The panel is looking at last year’s disturbance at the US Capitol as a potential coup attempt.

The House of Representatives select committee is attempting to establish that Mr. Trump’s attempts to maintain power prior to the violent raid on Congress by a horde of his supporters on January 6, 2021, constituted unlawful behaviour.

Prior to November’s mid-term elections, Mr. Trump, a Republican, has called the investigation a “kangaroo court” meant to divert attention away from the “disaster” of Democratic-led government and skyrocketing inflation.

President Joe Biden’s popularity has never been lower, and Mr. Trump has hinted that he would seek for office again in 2024.

The sixth public session, held on Thursday, centred on Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign against the Department of Justice, which is the federal organisation in charge of upholding US law and is meant to be impartial to the White House.

Before the attack on the Capitol, where senators were gathered to ratify Mr. Biden’s victory, former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen claimed that Mr. Trump had contacted him “nearly every day.”

Trump requested, “leave the rest to me and the Republican legislators,” according to Mr. Rosen, that the justice department release a statement questioning the election results.

Mr. Rosen claimed he objected. He informed the committee, “We did not think they were acceptable based on the facts or the law.”

Richard Donoghue, a former acting deputy attorney general, claimed in court that during a 90-minute session in December 2020, he disproved every one of Mr. Trump’s “arsenal of [voting fraud] charges.”

Republican from Illinois and committee member Adam Kinzinger highlighted that the Trump administration had once looked into a fictitious allegation that Italian satellites moved votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.

He claimed that this was one of the best illustrations of the lengths to which President Trump would go in order to maintain his position of authority.

The meeting learned that at least five of Mr. Trump’s allies, who had backed his efforts to rig the election, had requested presidential pardons to shield them from further prosecution.

The meeting also learned about an intense Oval Office confrontation between Mr. Trump and three senior justice department officials on the evening of January 3, 2021.

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The committee was informed that Mr. Trump presented a plan to replace Mr. Rosen with an ally named Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer with no requisite background to lead the department.

Mr. Clark had written a message on letterhead instructing legislators in places where Mr. Trump narrowly lost on how to nullify their election results.

According to Mr. Donoghue, Pat Cipollone, the White House attorney at the time, had forewarned that the letter would be “a murder-suicide pact.”

He claimed that he, Mr. Rosen, and another senior employee, Steven Engel, cautioned the president that if he appointed Mr. Clark, there would be a mass exodus from the justice department. In the end, Mr. Trump changed his mind.

Invoking his right not to self-incriminate, the committee claimed Mr. Clark had declined to respond to its inquiries. The hearing on Thursday was scheduled soon after news broke that the FBI had searched Mr. Clark’s residence.

The search of Mr. Clark’s property raises the possibility of criminal charges for the alleged election conspiracy, including against the former president himself, according to BBC reporter Tara McKelvey, who was present at the hearing.

The panel on Thursday also heard allegations that six House Republicans had asked Mr. Trump for preemptive presidential pardons in case they were charged after he left office for supporting his appeal of the election results.

The congressmen were identified by former White House employees as Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Louie Gohmert of Texas, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. None of them were given a reprieve.

Before the committee draughts a report on the Capitol attacks, there will be two additional public hearings the following month.

Although the panel cannot indict the former president, it is anticipated that it would report its conclusions to the justice department.

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