Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/109

109 Okay.

And, Mr. Donoghue, what was your and Mr. Rosen's response to the whole notion of a special counsel, the appointment of a special counsel? When he said, this seems like the kind of thing that would merit that, what was your response?

On that, we didn't say a lot, but I think it was essentially left to, well, if we don't see evidence supporting these individual allegations, then there's no evidence that would warrant appointing a special counsel.

Yeah.

All right. Anything else about that meeting that sticks out in your mind now as noteworthy?

We definitely talked about Antrim County again. That was sort of done at that point, because the hand recount had been done and all of that. But we cited back to that to say, you know, this is an example of what people are telling you and what's being filed in some of these court filings that are just not supported by evidence. 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. You know, you seize evidence pursuant to search warrants, and we're nowhere in a position to seek a search warrant, so we can't just go in and seize machines.

And the President asked something to the effect of, doesn't the Federal