Thread by @SethAbramson

(🧵) LIVE THREAD: I’m now live-tweeting today’s (Thursday’s) 3PM ET House January 6 Committee hearing. I’m a lawyer, journalist and historian who’s been contacted by the Committee and whose J6-focused substack—PROOF—the Committee has cited. I hope you’ll RETWEET and follow along.

1/ At times I may make reference in this thread to evidence previously published in the nearly 200 reports on January 6 that appear at PROOF (link below). About half of these reports are free at PROOF, while the other half are for subscribers ($5/month). sethabramson.substack.com

2/ This live thread is of course free. If, as you follow it from now until 5:30PM, you feel moved to use the tip jar in my bio (see image below for location) I appreciate it, even as I add that it is—as ever—100% optional. You can also tip via PayPal here: sethabramson.net/pp

3/ Today’s hearing will focus on Trump’s plot to make DOJ a co-conspirator in his coup. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) will question at least 3 witnesses:

▪️ Jeffrey Rosen, ex-Acting AG
▪️ Richard Donoghue, ex-Acting Deputy AG
▪️ Steve Engel, ex-Assistant AG, Office of Legal Counsel

4/ A few additional notes:

▪️ This hearing is "out of order," inasmuch as it (i.e., its topic) was supposed to be slotted into last week’s hearings.
▪️ This is the final House January 6 Committee hearing for June. There will be at *least* two televised hearings later in July.

5/ And some more important notes:

▪️ Today’s hearing will also cover the matter of *pardons*—i.e., Trump’s co-conspirators secretly seeking them—as DOJ is often involved in this process.
▪️ As ever, today’s HJ6C witnesses are ardent Republicans.
▪️ The hearing will run ~2 hours.

6/ Past hearings focused on Trump trying to influence individuals and entities over which he technically did *not* have direct control, e.g. state-level executives and legislators or local election workers. But today we are focusing on federal executive employees, and it matters.

7/ We here get to learn more about *one corner* of the coup plot—and it really is only one corner of it—in which Trump had near-absolute control, inasmuch as he could fire the head of the DOJ (the Attorney General). And what do we find? *Just this corner* is worse than Watergate.

8/ Trump first attempted to weaponize the DOJ as an instrument of illegal election fraud—demanding that it *contradict its own evidentiary findings* and declare the 2020 election fraudulent as a means of justifying a whole menu of things that Trump wanted to do that were illegal.

9/ Had DOJ falsely declared the 2020 election fraudulent—when Trump’s own internal election watchdog, CISA, had declared it the most safe and secure in America’s history—the *Pandora’s Box* it would have opened is beyond anything most Americans can possibly imagine. For instance:

10/ Trump would have used such a public DOJ pronouncement as an excuse to seize voting machines, ignore court orders, pressure (or even threaten with prosecution) state officials (and perhaps even Mike Pence), incite further mob violence...and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

11/ A DOJ declaration that the 2020 election was fraudulent would’ve been a shibboleth—a sort of mystical password discussed in the Bible—to unlock the end of American democracy, putting an imprimatur of legitimacy on Trump’s entire coup conspiracy and plans for a U.S. autocracy.

12/ While this was only a *corner* of Trump’s plot, it was vital to him because he felt he had the most control over *this*—as he saw the DOJ as being "his" plaything. Keep in mind, Trump *repeatedly* interfered in DOJ operations throughout his presidency (see the Proof Trilogy).

13/ Moreover, Trump had not only leaned on Attorney General Bill Barr to delay or even skip prosecution of Trump allies and business associates, he’d even successfully forced fraudulent investigations—for instance, the ongoing Durham farce—so he had much reason for optimism here.

14/ But Trump’s optimism was dashed when Attorney General Barr told him all his claims of fraud were "bullshit"—Barr’s words to Trump—in December 2020, which led to Barr either being forced out of his position or voluntarily resigning, depending upon who’s answering the question.

15/ Trump was hopeful Barr’s replacement would be so happy in his new position that *he’d* do the then-president’s bidding—but Rosen (testifying today) refused. So Trump hatched a plot to pluck an obscure stooge from inside the DOJ, get his commitment to lie about the election...

16/ ...and then replace Rosen with his DOJ stooge, essentially conducting a Saturday Night Massacre (soft-firing Barr, then actually firing Rosen) in the open, and broad daylight, until he got his *Robert Bork*—the Watergate-era scoundrel who finally agreed to do Nixon’s bidding.

17/ An aside: the GOP has been corrupt so long—and sponsored corruption among its leaders so long—that it was almost *50 years ago* Bork did his dirty work for Nixon. His reward? The GOP nominated him for the *Supreme Court*. So Trump had reason to think he could pull this stunt.

18/ The stooge’s name is Jeffrey Clark. What does Clark think about this *Watergate-level conspiracy* he participated in with the sitting president of the United States? We don’t know—because Clark has now pleaded his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination ad infinitum.

MID-STREAM BREAKING NEWS/ As I was writing the last tweet, I saw the breaking news from the New York Times: the FBI has raided Jeffrey Clark’s home. nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/…

19/ It’s both good news and bad news that the FBI did this today. It is good news because Clark certainly himself believes he has potential exposure to criminal liability, he clearly was part of a conspiracy with Trump, and therefore we want the FBI to investigate him thoroughly.

20/ But it is also bad news—or, rather, a bad *sign*—because it is the *second* time this week that DOJ has taken an investigative action only at or around the time Congress began discussing an issue in public (the other is the fake-elector plot). Why is DOJ waiting for Congress?

21/ This raid should have happened almost a year and a half ago. The subpoenas for fake electors should have been sent almost a year and a half ago. In the interim, witnesses could synchronize stories, destroy evidence, "forget" things in a way that cannot be gainsaid, and so on.

22/ Many of us who are at once journalists, lawyers and former investigators have long said the issue isn’t the pace of DOJ indictments but DOJ *investigations*. Investigations have a clear time-value—you have to move fast. DOJ has moved at a *glacial* place and it’s inexcusable.

23/ In any case, if you’re wondering why today’s hearing was initially scheduled for last week, it’s almost certainly because the HJ6C wanted to show how Trump got more and more desperate as the part of his coup plot he thought he had absolute control over failed during December.

24/ Barr had announced he was leaving DOJ in mid-December—right around the time Biden’s landslide victory was certified by all 50 states and DC. It was right after this point that Trump, Team Kraken, Stop the Steal, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers got angry and desperate.

25/ Once Barr—who’d surprisingly blocked the statement Trump wanted from the DOJ after being Trump’s loyal stooge for years—was gone, and Biden’s victory certified at the state level, chaos ensued. And Trump’s Watergate-like plot coincided with this late-December backroom mayhem.

26/ So let’s look at the broader context for this hearing: (1) violent threats against HJ6C members are exponentially increasing, as Trump rages uselessly online and the GOP has no real response to any of the evidence against him; (2) the HJ6C is getting *tons* of new evidence...

27/ ...including testimony from a documentary filmmaker with privileged access to Trump and his family before and after January 6 who testified before the Committee today—thus the late start today—so while we’re getting a two-week-plus delay between this hearing and the next...

28/ ...the reason for this appears to be in part because new evidence is coming in to the Committee every day. This is consistent with what PROOF has reported ever since we knew these hearings were happening: they do *not* represent the end but the *middle* of an investigation.

29/ For ratings purposes, major media wanted these hearings to be the climax of a congressional investigation; meanwhile, PROOF was writing that the coup conspiracy was so vast and complex that there is *no way* all the evidence could be in by June. And PROOF was correct in this.

30/ I note this because some Americans many wrongly think this delay is somehow a sign of a problem; it’s not. It’s a great thing that the hearings will unfold over a longer period of time—and with more of them than we originally thought—and with even more evidence than expected.

31/ We have already had a *number* of HJ6C hearings—all of them explosive—and entire topics have barely been mentioned even a single time: Stop the Steal; the Oath Keepers; Women for America First; the Pentagon; Roger Stone’s fundraising; Trump’s January 2 conference call...

32/ ...and that’s just a start. Remember, Benghazi—an investigation about a non-scandal (albeit a series of tragic deaths)—took *two and a half years* of investigation to reach a conclusion. Were the GOP not possibly about to take the House, the HJ6C would be working for 5 years.

33/ Which brings us back to today—and the hearing that’s about to start. The Committee, because of political exigencies and the artificial timeline of the 2022 national elections, is going to try to summarize a Watergate-level sub-scandal in two hours. An impossible task, really.

34/ As you watch today’s hearing, consider that Trump has complained for years about a "Deep State" that allegedly exists within the federal government, particularly DOJ and the State Department. It *doesn’t* exist—but in *this* scandal, Trump was trying to *build* a Deep State.

35/ In Proof of Corruption—my book on Trump-Ukraine—I reported that Trump tried to use his criminal co-conspirators to run a State Department *outside the State Department* but with presidential authority. Trump was impeached for it.

Here, he tried to do the same thing with DOJ.

36/ Jeffrey Clark was *recruited* by outside parties to be a stooge. And I wonder who did that recruiting. Was Ginni Thomas—Trump’s presidential adviser, and scout for legal talent—involved? I imagine that is being looked into also.

Rep. Thompson just gaveled in today’s hearing.

37/ Thompson begins by speaking of Trump’s "pressure campaign" on DOJ. The Committee seems to *like* this term: "pressure campaign." I do not. I know the HJ6C doesn’t want to tread on DOJ’s toes, but it previously used the term "conspiracy"—and that was *exactly* the right term.

38/ While it won’t be part of today, a reason Trump almost appointed Sidney Powell a special prosecutor *in the White House Counsel’s office* is because he was failing to get DOJ to do as he wanted. So when the plot we’ll hear of today failed, Trump flirted with the unimaginable.

39/ Powell has since admitted in court filings that no reasonable person should have listened to anything she ever said about the election (yes—feel free to look it up on Google). Trump almost made her the most powerful lawyer in America because his DOJ plot had failed miserably.

40/ Cheney is noting in *her* opening statement that *much* more evidence is coming in hearings, *and* that the ultimate HJ6C report will have evidence we don’t get in the hearings. She’s summarizing all Trump’s misconduct—even going back to his post-election fundraising scam.

41/ Stunning! Cheney just clearly said the RNC *conspired with Trump* in his "fake-elector" scheme.

She is saying that the Republican Party as an *institution* was a coup co-conspirator. No wonder Republicans are trying to destroy her career and crazies are threatening her life.

42/ Cheney says Clark and Trump conspired to create a letter—a letter in which DOJ falsely declared fraud in the 2020 election—that they would then send to state legislatures to try to get those legislatures to *decertify* Biden’s win. Trump and Clark knew the letter was a lie.

43/ The letter would’ve *advised* GOP-led state legislatures to open special sessions. Cheney indicates that Giuliani and Eastman appeared to have helped draft the letter Clark was going to send to battleground states after Trump had installed him as AG (following firing Rosen).

44/ Trump initially worked with Clark to try to *cajole* acting AG Rosen into signing the letter Clark (likely with aid from Giuliani and Eastman) had written; when that failed, *that* was when Trump was about to fire Rosen and replace him with Clark—to get that letter sent out.

45/ Now stunning deposition video from former AG Bill Barr saying that if this Trump-Clark plot at DOJ had succeeded, "I'm not sure we would have had a transition [to a Biden administration] at all."

46/ Note that former federal prosecutor Barb McQuade has said on MSNBC that if Rosen had been fired, *100+ top federal prosecutors*—US attorneys and leading AUSAs—were going to resign their jobs immediately in what would’ve been the most historic revolt by lawyers in US history.

47/ Trump told Rosen to "just call the election corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman." Trump knew at the time that the election was free and fair and that he had *lost*. He was *clearly* saying that GOP elected officials would help him perfect his coup.

48/ In his opening statement, Rep. Kinzinger (R-IL) is playing video of Democratic and GOP Attorneys General at their nomination hearings outlining how AGs *must* be independent from the White House. Kinzinger is comparing this to Jeffrey Clark’s criminality as a prospective AG.

49/ Now we get video from Trump lawyer Eric Hershmann—a *pro-MAGA guy*—saying that he told Clark to his face that if he became AG and did what he planned his *first* act would be a federal felony. Now we see a video dramatizing the Oval Office meeting about possibly firing Rosen.

50/ This Oval Office meeting has to be one of the most historic in history. Clark was there, and Trump, and Rosen, and Rosen’s deputy Donoghoe, and several other lawyers. Clark was pitching *himself* to take over for Rosen—a DOJ coup—using the "letter" he’d written to aid Trump.

51/ Keep in mind this was in a sense staged: Trump would’ve known about this letter, and Clark, and how the letter was created (apparently with aid of Giuliani/Eastman). Trump had staged a play in which there’d be a DOJ coup. But everyone else in the room attacked Clark directly.

52/ Cipollone was also there, and Eric Hershmann. They *all told Trump* that Clark was not qualified to be AG and Cipollone said the "letter" Clark had was a "murder/suicide pact" that would destroy the professional life of anyone who touched it. But Trump was "intrigued"...

53/ ...and asked the men before him (Rosen and Donoghoe) what they would do if he replaced Rosen with Clark. Again, *nothing* he was hearing *in the room* was pointing to that course of action, but the whole event had been staged—it appears—so Trump could fire Rosen in this way.

54/ Trump was advised—to his face—that if he took that action he’d face resignations at DOJ. (And it soon became clear it would be the biggest mass exodus from DOJ, from offices *all across the country*, any president in history had faced. Trump apparently wasn’t expecting this.)

55/ The three witnesses listed early in this thread have just been sworn in.

56/ Thompson, in his questioning, is doing a good job of reminding America that *at all times* Trump knew—had been told—that he lost the election and that there was no systemic fraud, and that information *never* stopped him from claiming otherwise (unlike any reasonable person).

57/ (The "reasonable person" standard can stop a criminal defendant from claiming "earnest belief" under the "willful ignorance" legal doctrine.)

58/ Former AG Rosen is saying that Trump kept asking him to meet with Rudy Giuliani and insisted he wanted to appoint a special counsel for the 2020 election (eventually he would consider Sidney Powell for this and, according to her, even tell her that she had *gotten that job*).

59/ On December 15, Donoghoe was called to the White House with others to discuss a recent report from the Mike Flynn-affiliated, Dallas-based, far-right Allied Security Operations Group claiming fraud in Michigan. Trump claimed to be certain that ASOG had found election fraud.

60/ DOJ never found any information whatsoever to confirm the claims made by ASOG, which was working hand in glove (I am saying this now, based on my research at PROOF) with Trump’s legal team (e.g., Giuliani, Eastman, and Powell).

61/ Videos are being shown of a Fox News host, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) , Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Trump falsely telling America there was fraud after they knew DOJ had found *none*.

62/ This is *by far* the most direct accusation the Committee has ever made against sitting members of Congress.

It’s on, apparently.

63/ Donoghoe is testifying that Trump appeared to have a bottomless "arsenal" of conspiracy theory allegations. Donoghoe said "there were a lot of people whispering in his ear, feeding him conspiracy theories." He knocked down every single one in 90 minutes (Rosen took 2 hours).

64/ DOJ *immediately* knocked down every pile of BS Trump threw at the wall. Every single one. Trump only got more and more incensed. Donoghoe is emphasizing that the ASOG report on Antrim County wasn’t just wrong but *wildly*—almost *comically*—false. Football fields from sane.

65/ And he is emphasizing that DOJ *did* investigate all these allegations, so when it knocked them down it explained *exactly* to Trump how they were knocked down.

Donoghoe says not a *single* Trump allegation—I emphasize here, not *one*—was ever found at *all* credible by DOJ.

66/ Donoghoe is giving the example of Trump claiming "200,000" (or "250,000") votes were counted in Pennsylvania that were never cast. Donoghoe had never even *heard* of this allegation before.

67/ Critically, Trump wanted Big Government to step on the faces of states’ rights; states get to run their own elections, but *Trump* wanted *DOJ* to decide how states should run elections.

This goes against *everything* the party Trump was then leading stood for. *Incredible*.

68/ Donoghoe is making very clear that DOJ *never* found any fraud that would even come *close* to changing the result in any state. (To be clear, Donoghoe was in the Oval on December 15; in calls with Trump after; and the big historic Rosen-Clark meeting was on January 3, 2021.)

69/ It should be understood that *all* these conversations were inappropriate. Trump was a candidate in the election and he was directly pressuring top DOJ officials to bring a cause of action (and/or investigations) on his behalf *and* step on states’ rights to do so—incredible.

70/ Holy cow! First mention of the big December 21—2020—meeting in the Oval Office with Trump’s congressional allies. PROOF has talked about this a lot. Greene, Gohmert, Gaetz, Jordan, Hice, Perry, all the insurrectionists were there. Wow, the HJ6C is really going after Congress.

71/ Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) apparently helped Trump and Giuliani select Clark—an environmental lawyer!—for their coup plot inside DOJ.

72/ Giuliani, in a depo, says they wanted "someone who wasn't going to be worried about what would happen to their reputation [if they aided Trump]." A Meadows aide, in depo, says Perry pointed them to Clark.

73/ We now find that Clark went to a secret meeting in the White House in December—in the Oval Office—at Perry’s invitation. The meeting was unauthorized, and Clark hid it from acting AG Rosen after the fact. DOJ has a policy making this White House meeting a major violation.

74/ Apparently the *White House* also has a policy making the Trump-Clark meeting a major violation and unauthorized. Wow. And a legislative branch employee—Perry—helped make it happen. This in itself was a major scandal. Cipollone told Clark this was a *White House* violation.

75/ Now we have December 26 (2020) texts from Perry to Meadows telling Meadows he must get Trump to put Clark in at DOJ in a position where he can run elections investigations. (Remember, Clark had no experience at all with any of this—he is an environmental lawyer.)

76/ This is insane. Perry then called Donoghoe (the deputy acting AG) saying he did not trust the FBI and there needed to be a new, special investigation of election fraud in Pennsylvania (apparently the same BS claim Trump had spoken to Donoghoe about earlier; total nonsense).

77/ So Trump had mentioned Clark to Donoghoe, and then Perry mentioned Clark to Donoghoe, then Clark sent his "letter" to Donoghoe and Rosen on December 28 (2020) asking them to send the election-tampering letter—falsely claiming election fraud—to officials in Georgia.

78/ Donoghoe says the letter would’ve had "grave consequences" for America and could’ve "spiralled us into a constitutional crisis" because a) it was NOT the DOJ role to ever send a letter like that, b) the letter did NOT reflect *anything* DOJ had ever found about the election.

79/ At a face-to-face meeting immediately thereafter with Rosen and Donoghoe and Clark, Donoghoe told Clark (on December 28) to his face, "what you are doing is nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election."

80/ But Clark did not relent.

Why?

It’s clear: he had the support of Trump and Perry.

So Clark started secretly "conducting investigations of his own"—and got DNI to brief him on "foreign election interference" (the obsession of Team Kraken; there’s a much longer story here).

81/ On January 2, 2021, Donoghoe and Jeffrey Clark had yet *another* "highly confrontational" meeting. Clark was spouting insane conspiracy theories and responded to claims he was meddling in an election that "many people have meddled in this election."

Scary, unhinged stuff.

82/ Clark recruited another lawyer at DOJ (Ken Klukowski [ph]) who had worked with Eastman to help him.

OMG—we now have a letter from Ken Blackwell, of Ginni Thomas’s Groundswell group, supporting the Eastman-Klukowski-Clark plot.

I told you we’re coming closer to Ginni Thomas.

83/ We are now in a 10-minute recess.

I wonder how many major-media journalists now discussing the HJ6C hearing realize how close we just came to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas being directly implicated in a criminal conspiracy on national television.

84/ So Clark got raided by the FBI today; *everyone* agrees the Eastman-Klukowski-Clark plot was aided by Donald Trump and Rep. Perry and was a *criminal* plot; and we now have Ken Blackwell trying to aid the plot behind the scenes as he was part of *Ginni Thomas’s* Groundswell.

85/ 🤯

86/ You are going to have to Google this to understand that I am right when I say it, but Kenneth Blackwell is the man who stole the 2004 presidential election for Bush—*single-handedly*. I cut my teeth in political journalism researching the actions of Kenneth Blackwell in 2004.

87/ OK, more on Ken Klukowski: this John Eastman associate shows up suddenly as a new Jeffrey Clark deputy at DOJ on December 15th, 2020; he had co-written "the letter" with Clark (again, I suspect with aid from Eastman and Giuliani); and he began rogue investigations with Clark.

88/ This story is way wilder than I thought, I must admit. PROOF hasn’t focused on the DOJ angle of the coup, but I *know* that a lot of what we’re learning right now—especially about Klukowski, Perry, and Blackwell—has not been reported before. This is bombshell after bombshell.

89/ Remember that Republican attorney John Wood—a former Clarence Thomas clerk, member of the Thomas Clerk World listserv, and an investigator for the House January 6 Committee—just unexpectedly left the HJ6C. The Post says he may run for Senate—but I think it’s more complicated.

90/ To be very clear here, I *don’t* mean Wood did anything wrong(!), I mean that he cannot credibly be a lead investigator for the House January 6 Committee if they are shortly going to set their sights directly on Ginni Thomas, as all the evidence suggests they are going to do.

91/ The hearing has now resumed.

I want to remind everyone that Trump was involved—directly and personally and by phone and sometimes in person—at every single stage of the Eastman-Klukowski-Clark plot that Groundswell’s Blackwell was trying to aid behind the scenes.

92/ Kinzinger has turned to Steven Engel from the Office of Legal Counsel.

Apparently Trump sent a draft lawsuit to Engel to have him, Rosen, and Cipollone have the DOJ file the lawsuit with the *Supreme Court*.

Trump wanted to go right... to the *SCOTUS*. Where *Thomas* was.

93/ This new lawsuit intended to be filed by and "as" DOJ was created by... unnamed *outside parties*.

Everyone see where this is going?

Some group outside government created a lawsuit intended to go before Clarence Thomas.

If Ginni Thomas knew about any of this... holy ****.

94/ So Trump was pressing Engel to get DOJ to let a *state Attorney General* investigate the election on behalf of DOJ.

Oh God... remember that the Republican Attorneys General Association helped set up the events of January 6. This conspiracy is so complicated and encompassing.

95/ Folks, I am struggling to keep up. So many bombshells. Trump was like an octopus with his tentacles *directly* in all of this. *Many* GOP members of Congress had their tentacles in this. And Trump was working with his allies to hatch so many schemes: a Special Counsel one...

96/ ...involving Sidney Powell; a state Attorney General one that I imagine would have involved Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton; the Eastman-Klukowski-Clark plot to send the "Georgia letter"...

My God. Our Department of Justice was under major attack from *so many directions*.

97/ All these plots were being held back by 3 men: Rosen, Donoghoe and Engel. Today’s three witnesses.

So on January 3, Trump threatened to clean house at DOJ completely.

But first Trump held a December 31 (2020) meeting where he was angry and wanted to *seize voting machines*.

98/ Seizing voting machines is what Team Kraken had demanded on December 18 during its secret three-hour meeting at the White House with Trump in the Oval Office and then the Presidential Residence (I did a viral thread on this recently many of you will have seen).

99/ Trump apparently *ordered* the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines—directly ordered Ken Cuccinelli, head of DHS.

OMG. This is f*cking terrifying. That would have plunged us into autocracy. DOJ had never told Trump that DHS could seize voting machines.

100/ On January 1, 2021, Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows sent a message to Rosen telling him to send Clark to Georgia to investigate Fulton County. This is batsh*t. Rosen said that message made it clear to him that Trump was getting closer and closer to just installing Clark.

101/ Perry was sending crazy conspiracy theories to Mark Meadows, who then sent them to Rosen, who sent them to Donoghoe. We are watching a video describing the conspiracy theory... it is too insane for me to even live-tweet. It involves Italy, MI6, the CIA, and the U.S. embassy.

102/ Donoghoe called the video he was sent "pure insanity."

103/ OMG... now Kash Patel, from the Pentagon, is getting involved, asking Donoghoe about the Italy conspiracy theory. Jesus... these coup conspirators had brought the *Pentagon* in their plotting. (We will learn, soon I think, who was doing "intel" work for Trump’s legal team).

104/ OMG... Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller actually *reached out to Italy’s government via an attache* to try to investigate this insane Italian conspiracy theory. Again, Congress should be asking which "intel" people were feeding this to Trump. I am pretty sure I know.

105/ The weekend before January 6, Trump was working on replacing the AG (Rosen) and replacing him with Clark. Rosen tried to talk sense into Clark—who maintained a belief in conspiracy theories, though he had no evidence to support them. He revealed he was in contact with Trump.

106/ Jeffrey Clark had sworn to AG Rosen that he would have no secret contact with Trump. But he had continued doing so. It is now clear that he maintained this contact *because Trump was dangling the AG position in front of him* to get him to violate White House and DOJ policy.

107/ Apologies, I have been misspelling "Donoghue." Will stop doing so.

108/ The hearing is now covering the flurry of phone calls in advance of the Monday, January 4 (2021) meeting—48 hours before the attack on the Capitol—at which Trump planned to fire Rosen and install Clark.

109/ Clark comes off as a madman in this hearing, quite honestly. So do Trump and even Meadows, not to mention Perry, Eastman, and Klukowski.

I do not know where we would be without Rosen, Donoghue, and Engel. This hearing is absolutely astonishing me. I mean... my God.

110/ Imagine trying to condense a scandal five times worse than Watergate into a single congressional hearing.

That is this hearing.

111/ Donoghue helped Rosen find out what the AAGs (Assistant AGs) would do if Trump fired Rosen and replaced him with Clark. Donoghue said they had a few minutes to tell him and Rosen what they’d do. They needed this info to present to Trump on Monday. All said they would resign.

112/ OMG, by January 3 the White House was already calling Clark "the acting Attorney General." Clark was in regular contact with Trump the weekend before January 6.

The January 4 hearing was angry and *everyone* was fully against the plot hatched by Trump and Clark. *Everyone*.

113/ I haven’t said it yet but will say it now: all three of these witnesses are extremely professional and credible. And they are all ardent Republicans.

114/ Testimony now about what happened in that January 4 hearing in the Oval. Clark spread all his conspiracy theories and they were all batted down—with evidence. Then the conversation turned to replacing Rosen with Clark, which everyone knew meant "the letter" would go out.

115/ So then-President Donald Trump said to the room, "What do I have to lose?"

Absolutely chilling that he even said this. He had no thought of the country or the rule of law whatsoever.

Trump was being told how dangerous this would be and how *unqualified Clark was* to be AG.

116/ *No one* in the room supported Clark’s takeover.

But Trump said, "What do I have to lose?"

117/ It appears the only thing that stopped Trump was that Donoghue told Trump, "You’re going to lose your entire Department leadership."

Donoghue then described for Trump a *total collapse of the Department of Justice across the entire United States*.

Read that sentence twice.

118/ It’s at this point that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told Trump the "Georgia letter" and installing Clark at AG was a "murder-suicide pact."

Trump was told that Clark would preside over a "graveyard"—an empty DOJ.

119/ Donald Trump called Donoghue that night (January 4, 2021) giving him "new" information about "shredded ballots" in Georgia.

This—I know from my PROOF research—was now coming from Trump’s Willard Hotel Insurrection Week "war room" (Giuliani, Eastman, Oltmann, Bobb, et. al.).

120/ We are now getting excerpts from Trump’s January 6 "incitement-to-insurrection" speech in which Trump repeats all the lies he had been told for *weeks* by DOJ were lies.

121/ Then-Acting AG Rosen is detailing what he did on January 6. He was a Cabinet-level official and he was in touch with Pelosi, McCarthy, Schumer, McConnell’s chief of staff, many members of Congress, and other Cabinet heads. They were telling him that the situation was dire.

122/ Rosen sent 500+ federal agents to the Capitol ASAP on January 6 in response to these urgent calls.

Trump sent no one.

123/ Rosen did not speak to Trump on January 6. He spoke to VP Mike Pence about the situation at the Capitol. This further confirms that Pence was the *de facto* President on January 6, because everyone in Trump’s Cabinet knew that the elected president was 100% AWOL on that day.

124/ Donoghue confirms that he *also* did not hear from Trump that day—January 6. But he too, like Rosen, heard from basically everyone else atop our government.

Trump was AWOL on January 6—that is, after he’d incited an armed mob to march on our government.

125/ We’re now covering the pardon issue. Brooks asked for a pardon for himself, Gaetz, and many others. Eric Hershmann (Trump attorney) says Gaetz and others believed they might be criminally prosecuted for their role in January 6. They wanted *blanket, massively broad pardons*.

126/ Holy ****—Brooks wanted a blanket pardon for EVERY MEMBER OF CONGRESS IN THE OVAL OFFICE ON DECEMBER 21, 2020.

Do people realize how long that list is? Biggs wanted a pardon. Gohmert. Greene. Hice. Perry. The list goes on and on. All believed they might’ve committed crimes.

127/ Kinzinger is giving his closing statement now (his questioning is concluded).

128/ His closing statement is about the *proper and historic role* of the Department of Justice in America, which it appears Donald Trump *never accepted* during the entirety of his presidency. He found a man—Clark—who like him believed that "facts were just an inconvenience."

129/ Kinzinger says the "wildest" corners of the internet—election conspiracy theories—somehow went "right" to the Oval Office. Again, we need to know much more about the amateur intel agents who say they assisted John Eastman—including members of the First Amendment Praetorians.

130/ Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and others were *fed* rank nonsense by men whose names haven’t been said at these hearings—and that nonsense went *immediately* to Trump and almost led to the collapse of American democracy and the birth of a new neo-fascist authoritarian regime.

131/ REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): "I’m still worried that not enough has changed to prevent this from happening again."

I agree.

132/ Now Cheney (R-WY) is giving her closing statement.

Cheney, like Kinzinger, lauds the courage of the witnesses.

The reason the Trump-Ukraine scandal happened is because certain political appointees at the State Department did *not* have the courage of these people from DOJ.

133/ Every time she speaks, Rep. Cheney underscores *how much more evidence* is coming. I appreciate that she does this and I know she is correct. Thompson is now wrapping up this fifth hearing of the House January 6 Committee by summarizing the basic facts: Trump lost...

134/ ...and he *knew* he lost, he had been told he lost, the election was free and fair and secure and not marked by fraud, Trump lied in court over and over again because there was no evidence in support of his conspiracy theories, yet Trump kept lying about the 2020 election...

135/ ...and he has continued lying about it, and his allies are still lying about it, and the only reason he’s not still president is because a small number of people in positions of power stood in his way in the face of all kinds of threats: personal, professional and otherwise.

136/ Thompson says the January 6 mob was Trump’s "backup plan." The mob was supposed to enact a violent coup if Trump could’nt enact a "political coup." This is a means of preparing America and the Committee for its July hearings—which will apparently focus on *January 6 itself*.

137/ Rep. Thompson (D-MS) emphasizes that the Committee is receiving a lot of new evidence and it will present much of it in July.

He’s now gaveled the hearing adjourned.

I cannot count how many bombshells we just heard. I am practically shell-shocked right now. I mean...Jesus.

(📢) FEED NOTE: This concludes this feed’s fifth June 2022 January 6 live thread. If you’d like to leave a tip in any amount for these threads, you can click the tip button in my bio or use PayPal at this link: sethabramson.net/pp

I’m so glad we went on this journey together