Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/150

150 At the time, at the end of December, do you believe that you, senior leadership at DOJ, as well as FBI, had an accurate threat assessment going into January 6th?

I think that we all understood the danger that was posed. I think we all understood that there were certain possible targets and that the potential for violence was very real. So I think we had a good understanding of what could happen. Obviously, what did happen was, in some sense, a worst-case scenario, but I thought we had a good understanding of the threat as we went into this.

And I thought we had good coordination across the agencies, such that the agencies that had specific areas of responsibility, such as the Capitol and the Capitol Police, were responsible for those areas, and we were confident they could handle it, and everyone was confident that everyone else would be ready, willing, and able to provide assistance if that was needed.

Well, let's skip ahead to January 3rd. And you spoke about this a little bit in the prior section, about a call with DOD in preparation for January 6th.

I'm going to turn to exhibit 34, which is your handwritten notes—

Yes.

—from that call. Could you describe who was on that call and what the purpose was?

The call was the afternoon of Sunday, January 3rd. It was DOD, DOJ, Interior, DHS, and the National Security Advisor, at least. I indicated in the parentheticals there who some of the participants were. There may have been some others that I just didn't capture there.

And we basically discussed what we were doing to respond to the potential threat, who had what resources, what were the likely target areas, did everyone understand