Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/124

124 hours. And Jeff Clark certainly was advocating for change in leadership that would put him at the top of the Department, and everyone else in the room was advocating against that and talking about what a disaster this would be.

What were Clark's purported bases for why it was in the President's interest for him to step in? What would he do, how would things change, according to Mr. Clark in the meeting?

He repeatedly said to the President that, if he was put in the seat, he would conduct real investigations that would, in his view, uncover widespread fraud; he would send out the letter that he had drafted; and that this was a last opportunity to sort of set things straight with this defective election, and that he could do it, and he had the intelligence and the will and the desire to pursue these matters in the way that the President thought most appropriate.

You said everyone else in the room was against this. That's Mr. Cipollone, Mr. Philbin, Mr. Herschmann, you, and Mr. Rosen. What were the arguments that you put forth as to why it would be a bad idea for him to replace Rosen with Clark?

So, at one point early on, the President said something to the effect of, "What do I have to lose? If I do this, what do I have to lose?" And I said, "Mr. President, you have a great deal to lose. Is this really how you want your administration to end? You're going hurt the country, you're going to hurt the Department, you're going to hurt yourself, with people grasping at straws on these desperate theories about election fraud, and is this really in anyone's best interest?"

And then other people began chiming in, and that's kind of the way the conversation went. People would talk about the downsides of doing this.

And then—and I said something to the effect of, "You're going to have a huge personnel blowout within hours, because you're going to have all kinds of problems with