I watched 90% of today's hearing and those characterizations by the New York Times are spot on. This was the committee's showcase day.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol painted a vivid picture on Thursday of how former President Donald J. Trump directed a wide-ranging bid to strong-arm the Justice Department into overturning the 2020 election…
In a stunning display of evidence, including testimony from top officials who resisted the former president’s efforts, the committee laid out how Trump tried repeatedly to use the Justice Department to interfere in the election. In near-daily conversations, he badgered its leaders to act on unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, including wild internet hoaxes, accusing them of failing to do their jobs. He explored naming a conspiracy theorist [Sidney Powell below] who was circulating outlandish stories of voting irregularities to serve as a special counsel to look into possible election misdeeds.
…
Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican who led the questioning, explored Trump’s most infamous response to being told that the department had not found evidence of election fraud. “That is not what I’m asking you to do,” Mr. Trump replied, according to Mr. Donoghue’s testimony. “I’m asking you to say it was corrupt and leave it to me and the Republican Congress.”
Okay fine, God, you can put me in Illinoise, I'll vote for Adam.
Trump wanted the department to “declare the election was corrupt even though he knew there was absolutely no evidence to support that statement,” Mr. Kinzinger said. “The president didn’t care about actually investigating the facts. He just wanted the Department of Justice to put its stamp of approval on the lies.”
That is exactly what he wanted to do.
...
“He hoped law enforcement officials would give the appearance of legitimacy to his lies, so he and his allies had some veneer of credibility when they told the country that the election was stolen.”-Chairman Bennie Thompson.
Exactly right.
…
...the committee…present[ed] a portrait of an embattled Justice Department that worked frantically to stave off a constitutional crisis driven by a president who refused to relinquish his power, and showed how close the country came to such a breakdown.
Painful to read.
...
[Rep. Scott] Perry [R-PA.] played...a prominent role...in Trump’s effort to weaponize the agency. [He] introduced [Jeffrey] Clark [on whose residence today the FBI executed a whatchall search warrant today],...the key man in Trump’s plan to wield the agency’s power to accomplish his goals,...to Trump the day after he and other Republicans met at the White House to discuss ways to overturn the election outcome. He pushed Mr. Meadows to have Trump install Mr. Clark as attorney general. And he encouraged Mr. Donoghue to give Mr. Clark more ability to “do something” about Mr. Trump’s fraud claims...[Clark]...pushed Mr. Rosen to send a letter to Georgia election officials that falsely claimed that the Justice Department “identified significant concerns” that would affect the state’s election results.
...
There was audible laughter in the hearing room when Mr. Donoghue recounted how he told Mr. Clark he was unqualified to be attorney general: “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill?”
...
…three days before the Jan. 6 attack, White House call logs show, Clark was referred to as the acting attorney general, suggesting that parts of the White House already believed that Trump had gone through with his plan and ousted Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general.
...In mid-December, [Trump] asked Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor who was circulating an array of groundless theories of widespread election fraud, to be a special counsel to investigate such allegations, according to testimony by Ms. Powell the panel played on Thursday.
