Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/154

154 Asked if—sorry, I think have it right—asked if DOJ is willing to do that as they did in Lafayette Square.

Let me just ask you first, when DOD asked if you were—for the civilian lead for ops in D.C., what did you understand that to mean?

General Milley brought this up, and it was very clear that he did not want any asset of the military involved at all in this, if possible. And that was fine. We were all in agreement with that. You know, we was very adamant about, the last thing this country needs is to have Active Duty troops on the streets of our capital. And we all agreed with that, so that wasn't much of a discussion.

National Guard is a little different because National Guard can provide backup to local law enforcement. So there's a distinction there. But we were all in agreement with General Milley.

And he said something to the effect of, "Can we get a civilian agency to take the lead on this? And, DOJ, can you do that? Can you be the lead, take the lead role in coordinating all this stuff?"

And DAG Rosen answered, "No. We are not prepared to do that at this time." And we had already had a call set up for the next day, the 4th. So he said, "I can give you more detail later and explain why, but we're not going to do that."

And the reason was that we had no authority over many of these components, nor could we have authority over those components. So DOJ had no authority over the Park Police, who belong to Interior. We had no authority over FPS, who belong to DHS. And that's even within the executive branch. We certainly had no authority over the Capitol Police, who reported up to the legislature. We had no authority over Metro P.D., who reported up to the city officials in D.C.

So the problem was, you have this fractured authority and jurisdiction in D.C. so