Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/116

116 we let him get the briefing, that he was still pursuing this idea that, because there were allegations out there, that was sufficient for the Department to send a letter like that.

So his demeanor was more of disappointment and, I suppose, some resignation. I was more angry, and I'm sure that was evident to everyone.

Yeah.

Tell me what steps you and Mr. Rosen took after the meeting. When you learned that Mr. Clark has gotten this offer, this job offer, what do you two decide to do, and what do you then—what steps do you take?

We then went down to Jeff Rosen's office. We sat there for some time talking about, what do we do now? I think we called Steve Engel, because we wanted Steve to be updated on everything—or I called Steve on my own or something like that. But we talked about, what do we do, and is this the time to broaden the circle and let other people know what's going on here, because we could be out of the Department with virtually no notice.

And so DAG Rosen decided that, you know what? We don't know what's going to happen. Let's just sleep on this tonight. We don't need to widen the circle at this point.

Engel knew. I think Pat Hovakimian also knew at that point. And the four of us, sort of, were going to keep it to ourselves, because we didn't want to create even more issues for the Department at a time when the Department was already under tremendous stress. And so—

Who was Pat Hovakimian?

Pat Hovakimian had been DAG Rosen's chief of staff when I first got to Washington in July. Pat was nominated to be the IG for the intelligence community. And so, somewhere in the fall, he was moved out of the chief of staff position because