Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/19

19 Okay. Describe that for us.

So the—let me explain the organization a little bit.

Yes.

Within the Criminal Division that sits at Main Justice, there is a section called the Public Integrity Section. Within Public Integrity, there is the Election Crimes Branch, ECB, and ECB had expertise in conducting election-related investigations. And so they were a resource to the 94 U.S. Attorney's Offices around the country.

There was, in the Justice manual, a number of requirements relating to consultation with the ECB, and that's common to have consultation requirements with different Main Justice components. There are also situations where you have approval requirements, where a U.S. Attorney's Office cannot go forward without getting the approval of certain Main Justice components.

ECB, because of their expertise and their role, published a manual—I forget the exact title, but it was essentially the election crimes manual. And, in there, they had over years developed and stated a practice, and this is an oversimplification, but the practice essentially was to not conduct investigations in real time while elections were going on, wait for the elections to be completed and certified and for the election winner to take office essentially, and then conduct investigations.

Obviously, this meant that you could not then address any fraud that may have contributed to the outcome of the election. Their thought was we should be conducting investigations essentially after the fact in an effort to deter misconduct in future elections.

That made a lot of sense, and there's certainly merit to that approach. I would call it a practice rather than a policy. This was not something issued over the signature block of an Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General or anything like that. An ECB