Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/118

118 want me there?" as I had been the day before. And he said, "No, I've known this guy for decades. I'll meet with him one-on-one. That's fine. I'll deal with it. And we'll take it from there."

So I went into my office. I worked on things throughout the afternoon. He came down—I think they met someplace in the building; maybe it was on the sixth floor. But he came back, he came to my office, and he said, "I met with Clark. He asked me to stay on as his DAG once he becomes the Acting Attorney General."

This clearly irritated the Acting Attorney General. He basically said, can you believe the nerve of this guy? And he said that he told him he would absolutely not remain on and that he would leave the Department.

And he said that Clark said he was going to communicate to the President probably that day that he was accepting the offer.

At that point, I said, "Well, I guess we're done," and I began taking things off the wall of my office. I had plaques hung up. I figured we were going to be out of there within hours or a day or something like that. And I took out boxes and I began packing up things, because I was going to resign as soon as Jeff Rosen was removed from the seat.

And I was packing up my office; Jeff Rosen went back to his office. And, after a short while, he came back and he said, I talked to Pat, meaning Pat Cipollone, and Pat says that, in his view, this is not a done deal and that we should go fight this out at the White House.

And he asked what I thought about that, and I said, well, certainly, if there's any shot of undoing this, we should do that. And he was of the same view. So we said, all right, let's do that, let's fight this out. And we then talked about—

And let me stop you there, Mr. Donoghue. When you say "we," you and Mr. Rosen are essentially aligned here, that it's the two of you together? The plan is, go