Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/143

143 Right.

What prompted Mr. Rosen to want to request a meeting with Michael Sherwin about January 6th specifically?

So we knew that January 6th was on the calendar. We knew, obviously, that was the day that the electoral college votes were going to be reported out in the Senate, and we knew that there were going to be protests.

So, on the 28th, that Monday, when we came to work, we shifted our focus, in part, to preparing for that. And so the Acting AG wanted to talk to Mike Sherwin, who was the acting U.S. attorney in D.C., about what the preparations were, how they were going, was there anything we could or should be doing to make sure that we were fully prepared for the 6th.

And so they reached out to him. Obviously, there was some difficulty in getting a hold of him. And I believe he had a family member who was ill at that time, and that impacted his availability a little bit. But we did have discussions with Mike Sherwin that week and straight through the 6th.

Apart from it being on the calendar, was there any intelligence about the potential for violence that prompted Mr. Rosen to want to have that meeting?

Yes. We were concerned about the potential for violence just because we had seen that people were very upset about the election. We had seen, through the summer, riots around the country where there had been violence. We were well aware of the political tension in the country. And we knew that if you have tens of thousands of very upset people showing up in Washington, D.C., that there was potential for violence.

And who was in charge of briefing yourself and Mr. Rosen in terms of what the available intelligence was?