You also noted that Mr. Rosen said to Mr. Trump quote DOJ can't and
won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election.
How did the president respond to that sir?
>> He responded very quickly and
said essentially that's not what I'm asking you to do.
What I'm just asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and
leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman.
>> The person you just heard from was the former acting deputy attorney general
Rich Donahue.
And he explained how Donald Trump tried to use the DOJ for his own purposes,
particularly in overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.
And he continued to do so even after his attorney general William Barr quit his
post in response to trump attempting to overturn the results of the election.
Now let's watch what else Donahue had to say during the hearings that
took place today.
>> Let's now put up the notes where you quote the president as you're speaking
to that.
He said the President the president said just say the election was corrupt and
leave the rest of me and the Republican congressman.
So Mr. Donahue that's a direct quote from President Trump, correct.
>> That's an exact quote from the president, yes.
>> So trump basically tells the DOJ.
Listen homeboy all I need you to do is tell the American people that there's
something fishy going on with the elections, it's corrupt and
then all my lapdogs will spring into action, meaning Republican lawmakers.
And they'll do the rest on my behalf, essentially dismantling
our electoral process giving a massive middle finger to tens of
millions of American voters who cast their ballots for Joe Biden.
Just that's all you need to do.
Just announce that it's corrupt.
And my pinch men will do the rest and luckily you have top level officials
within the Justice Department telling him no, we're unwilling to do that.
In fact, there was an oval office meeting in which these high level DOJ officials
threatened to quit if Trump carried out one of the actions he was
planning to carry out and we'll talk about that in a little bit.
But before we do, I think it's also important to note that these hearings
are starting to make it more and more clear that the Republican members of
congress who played a role in this bad behavior.
And essentially undermining the election might be the focus of the hearings and
maybe might even face some consequences for it.
And I'll explain why in just a moment, but
here's one of the moments that really caught my attention.
This is after Donahue had made it clear that trump wanted the DOJ to carry
out this kind of messaging to overturn the election.
Let's watch.
>> And so there's widespread evidence of fraud cuz people haven't done their jobs.
Durham and Barr will deserve a big notation in history
when it's written of the rise and fall of the United States
if they don't clean up this mess, clean up the fraud,
do your jobs and save this little experiment in self government.
>> Again, I joined my colleagues in calling on attorney general Barr to
immediately let us know what he's doing.
>> We're already working on challenging the certified electors.
>> And now, what about the court?
How pathetic are the court.
>> January 6 I'm joining with the fighters in the congress and
we are going to object to electors from states that didn't run clean elections.
Democracy is left undefended.
If we accept the results of a stolen election without fighting with
every bit of bigger we can muster.
>> The ultimate date of significance is January 6th.
This is how the process works.
The ultimate arbiter here, the ultimate check and
balance is the United States Congress and when something is done in
an unconstitutional fashion, which happened in several of these states.
We have a duty to step forward and have this debate and
have this vote on the 6th of January.
>> So when Trump communicated to top level officials in the DOJ that all they needed
to do was announced that there was corruption in the election.
And that the Republican congressman will do the rest what you just watched is
exactly what Trump was referring to and to add a little more weight to that argument.
It should be noted that several of those Republican lawmakers later asked for
pardons and that was a part of this hearing as well.
Those Republican congressmen include Scott Perry, Louie Gohmert, Andy Biggs,
Mo brooks and Matt Gates notably Paul Gosar was not listed there and
neither was Jim Jordans, but why would you ask for pardons?
Unless you engaged in something that can get you into a lot of legal trouble
Jessica I wanna bring you in because I have found these hearings to be
persuasive.
I kinda went in pretending to be someone who didn't buy [LAUGH]
what the hearings were supposed to sell us.
And I've been kind of surprised at how well they've been carried out.
What are your thoughts?
>> Honestly, yeah, just being able to see the inside of
what was going on throughout the days of the insurrection, I think has been huge.
Because for so long we've had people say, you know, we've got to complete
an investigation before we come to any conclusions about what happened.
Or if we see Donald Trump getting charged for a conspiracy around an insurrection.
And now we're at the point where they've actually done a pretty good
job compiling this evidence and presenting it in a way so
that it's understandable to the public, right.
These aren't just documents that the committee is overlooking themselves.
They've really done good work to make, you know,
diagrams of everyone who was sitting in that room with Donald Trump.
So we can really imagine what happened and
I think it's super interesting that now people are saying, okay,
they're not making recommendations to the DOJ about criminally charging Trump.
And I think we would all like to see that happen.
But let's keep in mind that right now there's a grand jury in Fulton county
Georgia looking at the evidence that's there to see if Donald Trump should or
should not be criminally charged.
And that's happening at the same time as these hearings,
which I'm pretty hopeful about.
>> Well, I mean, you bring up a good point about what's taking place in Georgia.
I've learned not to be hopeful about anyone in a position of power ever being
held accountable in this country, but I also want to be proven wrong.
So I hope you're right, I'm wrong.
But the other thing I wanted to mention is that the, I would argue most powerful
component of these hearings is that we're hearing from people who were appointed.
And obviously supported by Donald Trump during his administration.
So during today's hearing that there was testimony from former acting attorney
general Jeff Rosen, former active acting deputy attorney general Rich Donahue.
And then there was also testimony from former
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Engel.
And really there was only one member of the DOJ who was
willing to do trump's bidding.
And he was essentially someone tasked with environmental issues within
the DOJ who had absolutely no experience, let's say leading the DOJ.
But when these officials refused to carry out what Trump demanded of them.
He wanted to essentially replace them right,
replace the acting attorney general with someone named Jeffrey Clark,
who would essentially be another one of his lapdogs.
And Jeffrey Clark based on the evidence we heard today was very active in assisting
Trump in overturning the election.
Luckily he failed.
But some of the most shocking names have been named in these hearings in regard to
like who stood in the way of Donald Trump people like William Barr,
other trump appointees within the Justice Department.
And it's good to know that that exists.
But I think these hearings are also important because it really does set
the tone for what could be possible in the future.
Right, so if there aren't criminal, if there isn't criminal prosecution
of the individuals involved that will further embolden other bad actors in
the future to just engage in a power grab, because what do they have to lose?
It's not like they're gonna face any criminal charges.
>> Yeah, exactly I think it's super interesting to think about what would have
happened if they took a few extra steps.
And it's not interesting in the good way, right.
It's kind of a nightmare to imagine that we could have had this authoritarian right
wing leader take hold of power.
What if the electors went through and cast their ballots?
What if the state legislators did what they were asked to do,
what if he did make Jeff Clark the acting attorney general.
Because he said that he would tell the general public, hey,
we've got to investigate this, something sketchy happened with this election,
thankfully there were people who were close to Trump.
Who are saying absolutely not, we cannot do this because I think the alternative
would have been, hey, now we have an actual successful coup in this country.
And the way that Democrats in congress were acting when this was going on,
they didn't really have a strong sense of urgency around mobilizing to
stop the coup from happening thankfully.
Mike Pence actually was stepping up and giving some pretty direct and strong
orders as we heard about in this hearing, that, hey, we cannot let this coup happen.
We've got to get the military out here, we've got to get everyone out here.
But if you think about what could happen in the future,
if they were a little bit sneakier, this could have been a coup.
And that's really scary and that's going to embolden the next person that comes to
office of the likes of Trump.
>> And I mean, in some ways, we're already seeing the Republican Party put into
motion certain electoral advantages for themselves.
Right through state voter suppression laws making it incredibly difficult for
people who typically would vote for a Democratic candidate to be able to do so.
They're also setting in motion all sorts of conspiracy theories to make people
question whether or not the individuals who do participate in our elections can
legally do so, white replacement theory.
The notion that undocumented immigrants are being brought into the country to
participate in our elections, even though they don't have the legal right or
ability to do so the list goes on and on.
So while I think it's important to hold those who engaged in this behavior
accountable, it's also important to look at what the, like, what got us to
this position, what got the country to this place in the first place, right.
Because if we just think that it's about Donald Trump and nothing more,
I think we'd be mistaken.
There's a lot more to this than one administration full of bad actors.
>> Yeah, that's absolutely right.
I think if we think about the electorate and what's happening now,
they're being fed a ton of propaganda so that they're ripe for
the next demagogue that comes along.
But also we're having all of these folks appointed to positions of power who
are judges, who would probably rule in favor of someone like Trump if they came
in office again.
So they're really creating ripe conditions to do this again.
>> Yeah, you make such a great point there.
They've they've taken hold of the judicial system,
which we're gonna talk about later in the show.
It's terrifying and you need a strong opposition party that actually values
democracy and and values fighting to do the right thing to kind of counter that.
To kind of hinder what we're seeing the Republican Party engaging as we speak.