Portal:United States House of Representatives/Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol

“ There's no reason they should have gotten in that building. The Capitol Police had more than enough manpower. They were the agency that was best equipped and best positioned to defend the Capitol. Everyone knew that the Capitol was at risk. Everyone knew that there were going to be thousands of angry protesters showing up at the Capitol. Certainly, no one anticipated this type of breach, but you plan for the worst, and the Capitol Police should have planned for the worst, and they should have been prepared to defend that perimeter. ”

“ You're going hurt the country, you're going to hurt the Department, you're going to hurt yourself, with people grasping at straws on these desperate theories about election fraud, and is this really in anyone's best interest? ”

“ I said, sir, you should have whatever leadership you want in the Department, but understand, changing leadership is not going to change the outcome. The Department acts on facts and evidence. And the facts are what they are, the evidence is what it is, and it's not going to change.
At that point, the President said, "You, Rich, should go to Fulton County and do a signature verification, and you'll see how illegal it is. You'll find tens of thousands" of illegal ballots. I didn't respond to that.
The President then continued, there are "more votes than voters." ”

“ I said, "Bobby Christine is an excellent U.S. attorney." He said, "Yes, that's what I've heard. I want Bobby Christine to run the Northern District of Georgia."
I said, "Mr. President, Bobby Christine is already running the Southern District of Georgia. B.J. will have a first assistant. When he leaves, the first assistant will step up and be the U.S. attorney." He said, "No. I want Bobby Christine to do it, because if he is really good the way people say, maybe he'll do the job."
And then he yelled for one of the administrative assistants to get Bobby Christine on the phone. ”

“ If there's fraud that impacted the outcome of the election, they should know. If there's fraud allegations and we find that those are not supported by the evidence, the American people should know that as well.
So he wanted to take this more proactive approach. He wanted to give the U.S. attorneys the authority to do that, and I think they had that authority anyway. But the reality was, the way things had played out within the Department, the ECB acted as if they had approval and disapproval authority over the work of the U.S. Attorney's Offices. They did not. ”

“ And Jeff Rosen relayed that to me. And so, as we were getting toward the time to leave, I was again asking, "Is there anything else I can do? What do you need me to do?" And he said, "I need you to come to the White House."
And I said, "That's fine. I'll do whatever you want. But didn't Clark, sort of, lay out this condition?" And he just waved and said, "I don't care what Jeff Clark wants. I want you to come to the White House. You know these issues better than me," in terms of the election investigations. ”

“ I told him I would give him a response on Monday. I'm going to think about what I'm going to do, and I'll let you," Jeff Rosen, "know."
He was also upset that I was there. Because I remember, early on, when we walked in the room, he turned to the Acting Attorney General and said, I thought it was just going to be the two of us. And the Acting AG said, "No. Rich needs to be here for this. He knows more about what's going on. And we're the leadership team, and we want to hear what you have to say." ”

“ You are right; being a U.S. attorney is a great job. It's everyone's dream to get to come back to your office and do that, and I was very lucky to have the opportunity to do it. I was involved in things in D.C. from the time I became U.S. attorney.
I think my first month on the job I got a call from Rod Rosenstein, who said that he wanted me to serve on the AGAC, the Attorney General's Advisory Committee. ”

“ His response to that was something to the effect of "It's a policy, there's a lot more at stake here than a policy." And I reminded him that I was his boss at that point and that he was not to do that again and that he was making these comments and sending emails and drafting letters without the knowledge of what the Department had actually done in terms of investigations, that he was being reckless. And I recall toward the end saying: What you're proposing is nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a Presidential election. ”

“ Moving—the mayor herself doesn't have the authority to move the National Guard on to the Capitol grounds. So that's got to be done pursuant to a request by the Capitol Police. In order to protect Guard members, it was probably necessary for them to be deputized because, again, they don't have inherent authority to do law enforcement. They can direct traffic. They can do all kinds of things. But if they've got to place someone in custody, actually make an arrest on Capitol grounds, they've got to have law enforcement authority to do that. ”

“ That can be litigated before judges. But we, the Department, don't do that. We do, essentially, criminal investigations and civil-rights matters.
And so the President's response was, well, the "judges keep saying, where's the DOJ? Why is the DOJ not filing these cases?" And we both responded, "we," the Department, "are not in a position based on the evidence. We can only act on the actual evidence developed."
My next note says, "Told him flat out that much of the information he's getting is false and/or just not supported by the evidence. We look at the allegations but they don't pan out." ”

“ Q Apart from it being on the calendar, was there any intelligence about the potential for violence that prompted Mr. Rosen to want to have that meeting?
A Yes. We were concerned about the potential for violence just because we had seen that people were very upset about the election. We had seen, through the summer, riots around the country where there had been violence. We were well aware of the political tension in the country. And we knew that if you have tens of thousands of very upset people showing up in Washington, D.C., that there was potential for violence. ”

“ And, at that point, the hand recount had not been completed, and we did not have the feedback from CISA, C-I-S-A. And so we essentially said to him, Mr. President, we are aware of it. Yes. We all agree that, if there's a 68-percent error rate with Dominion voting machines, that we have a huge problem on our hands. But let's not jump to conclusions. Let's find out if this is accurate.
And, in a way, luckily, the hand recount had already been ordered and I think was already underway. And so I recall Ken Cuccinelli saying: Look, there's a hand recount underway. It's going to take 48 or 72 hours. ”

“ Looking at exhibit 44, we have a 10:43 a.m. email from , who states, "There are no credible threats as of the 10:00 brief."
Is that your briefing, or is that a separate briefing?
A No. So at this point is at the SIOC, and the SIOC does periodic briefing every few hours, just like virtually every command center I have ever worked in.
So every couple of hours, there's someone in charge of the shift, and they get up, and then they call individuals up who had their own areas of responsibility, and they brief, so everyone knows what's going on. ”

“ A When AG Barr left and Acting AG Rosen took over, we changed the meeting schedule a little bit. And we started having 9 a.m. meetings with different staff members in DAG Rosen's conference room. Steve was one of the people who was invited to the meeting every day. Other people rotated.
If you look at the chain of succession within the Department, it goes through a list of people who become the Acting Attorney General in the absence of people above them on the list. When you go through that list, you remove anyone who is in an acting position. ”

“ A So AG Barr asked—and I don't remember if this was on the 14th when I was upstairs, or it was the following morning or at some other point, but somewhere in this time period, AG Barr wanted Department of Homeland Security to take a look at the Allied report.
And the reason is, within Department of Homeland Security they have an agency called CISA, C-I-S-A, which is the cyber infrastructure—I'm sorry, Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency, and they have expertise in election hardware and software. ”

“ So this is the DAG explaining to DOD, and others on the call, what we as the Department were able to do. He said, with regard to intelligence, we're already doing that. The FBI is disseminating intelligence, others are as well, DHS, et cetera. But we are already doing that, and the FBI has an established mechanism through which it disseminates intelligence to State and local law enforcement officers. We'll continue to do that.
With regard to command posts, we're doing that as well. We are standing up with SIOC. Everyone is invited to be there. ”

“ Everyone knew that the Capitol and other facilities were potential targets. And I think we all felt comfortable that we were aware what the situation was, and we had the resources in place to address it.
I do remember now, as I'm looking at these notes, Dave Bowdich was in the DAG's office for this call. So Dave and I and the DAG were in that same office. There might have been some other people representing DOJ.
But, you know, when we hung up the phone, we sat around talking about it, again, amongst ourselves. Do we have everything in place? ”

“ So after the DAG explained what our view was of our role, General Milley began again reiterating that no one should want Active Duty troops used except as a last resort. And, again, we were all in agreement with that. And we began—
Q Was this after you all agreed that you would take on the, you know, the intel command posts until—that aspect of it, this was brought up again by General Milley?
A Yes. He went back to reiterate what he had started the conversation with the day before: No one should want Active Duty troops on the streets of our Capitol. Which we all agreed to. ”

“ DHS had the truck. And DHS talked, I think, to FBI; they talked to the U.S. Attorney's Office. What do you do about this truck? And so now that was Bobby's issue.
And Corey Amundson, who was the head of PIN, was also down in Atlanta because the special election was taking place that day, that Tuesday. And so I basically said to them, "Look, you two are down there. You two know what we do and don't do. I trust your judgment. Figure it out. If you need something, let me know, but, other than that, I'm leaving this to you guys." ”

“ Within Public Integrity, there is the Election Crimes Branch, ECB, and ECB had expertise in conducting election-related investigations. And so they were a resource to the 94 U.S. Attorney's Offices around the country.
There was, in the Justice manual, a number of requirements relating to consultation with the ECB, and that's common to have consultation requirements with different Main Justice components. There are also situations where you have approval requirements, where a U.S. Attorney's Office cannot go forward without getting the approval of certain Main Justice components. ”

“ I think I spoke to Don Washington, too, saying, get your guys ready. If the Capitol Police need help, we're sending help right away.
And they had previously—we had previously made clear to them that if they're asked for assistance, they should just deploy. They didn't need permission from me or the AG or anyone else. If a partner asks for help, just send your guys.
So there were some phone calls between the SIOC and WFO. When I got to WFO, I went inside. People were in the main command room. There were lots of different partners there. ”

“ The first half will be to talk a little bit about events around the time of the election, meetings and conversations you had with the President, former President and others in the White House, about allegations of election fraud. That should take up the morning, about 2 hours or so. Maybe we'll take a break, midday break for lunch.
And then we'll resume in the afternoon with some questions about preparation for and events of January 6th itself. will be the one asking you those questions. And I'll periodically stop. Members of the committee may have questions, other counsel here. ”

“ Dave Bowdich was in the conference room by himself with a phone on the table.
He was talking to some FBI leader. I don't know who it was. It was not Director Wray. He was asking that leader, Where are our guys? How many are there? Do they have the equipment? That sort of thing.
And he hung up, and we spoke briefly. We decided that it would be better off if we both moved toward the Capitol. Because you're always going to have these lags in information as it gets reported up to a command post. ”

“ And this is the problem; the problem is, people keep telling you these things and they turn out not to be true. So I remember we talked about Antrim County again.
There was a point at which the President said something about, "Why don't you guys seize machines?" And I don't remember if this was in relation to a specific jurisdiction or not, but, you know, "You guys should seize machines because there will be evidence there," something to that effect.
And Acting AG Rosen said, no, we don't seize machines. We can't just go in and take machines from State authorities. It doesn't work that way. ”

“ And he kind of retorted by saying, "Well, I've done a lot of very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that." And I said, "That's right. You're an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we'll call you when there's an oil spill."
And so it got very confrontational at points.
And Pat Cipollone weighed in at one point, I remember, saying, you know, "That letter that this guy wants to send, that letter is a murder-suicide pact. It's going to damage everyone who touches it. ”

“ Did you also then try to reach B.J. Pak, the then-U.S.-attorney in Atlanta?
A I did. I sent B.J. an email asking him to call me. He did call me. I told him about just the portion of the conversation that related to him.
He told me that, in fact, he did say that quote but that he had said it back in 2016 when he was serving in the Georgia legislature. He was critical of the President. But, nonetheless, he got the U.S. attorney job. ”

“ And then, again, I have a quote from him: "We have an obligation to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election."
Then he said, "People tell me Jeff Clark is great" and that "I should put him in. People want me to replace DOJ leadership."
At which point I responded, sir, that's fine, you should have the leadership you want, but understand, changing the leadership in the Department won't change anything. ”

“ Just to back it up a minute, Antrim County in Michigan had some litigation that was in State court. The Department was not involved in that whatsoever. We had no involvement. But, pursuant to that State litigation, a judge allowed the plaintiffs and their experts to look at the voting machines in Antrim County, and those were Dominion voting machines. Dominion is widely used around the country, both their hardware and their software. ”

“ I believe it says, "a police department QRF"?
A Yes. At that point we were just kind of wrapping up the call, saying, okay, does anyone else think we need anything else? Is there something we're missing? Are there any holes? And so on.
And people were just sort of chiming in. We were spitballing at this point. Do the police departments need a QRF, a quick reaction force? And then some chimed in and said, no, they all have QRFs, of course they do. This is not some small county police department. It's the Metro PD. It's the Capitol Police. They know what they're doing. ”

“ One is: Mr. Donoghue, we talked at some length about whether or not the White House or the President was informed about the Antrim report. On the result of the investigations, the interviews that had gone on on Fulton County, how would those results have been communicated to the White House, to the President?
Mr. Donoghue. I don't know how they were initially communicated. I do know that they came up in subsequent conversations with the President. And DAG Rosen and I essentially told him, "We looked into that, and it's just not true."
Ms. Cheney. Okay. So he was informed? ”