Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/22

22 also because I'd been a U.S. attorney, and I knew every U.S. attorney in the country, and I was very close to and friendly with a number of them. And so it was quite natural for us to be talking on a regular basis about what was going on whether it was related to the election or otherwise.

After this memo, I had a number of conversations with U.S. attorneys around the country about their investigations and also the challenges because not everyone was on board with the AG's approach.

So you served sort of a coordination or deconfliction role for the Department on matters of election fraud?

Yes. There wasn't so much conflict, but we had some instances where, you know, an allegation was made in, say, a swing State and you had multiple U.S. attorneys in that swing State and you didn't want all of them investigating the same thing. So there was some deconfliction. But it was mostly reporting up and saying that, yes, the U.S. attorney in this State is aware of the allegation and they're on top of it.

It was up to them to decide what to investigate and how to investigate it, if to investigate at all. But the concern was, is someone looking at this? You know, I think the AG stated it as we can't be sitting on our hands. As long as people are aware of the allegations and they're acting appropriately, that's fine. Leave it up to the U.S. attorneys to figure it out.

And you just said, Mr. Donoghue, that you reported up. Were you in regular communication with DAG Rosen and AG Barr about the fact that these investigations were going forward in the U.S. Attorney's Offices?

Yes. Being part of the Department leadership, we met with the AG every morning at 9 o'clock in his office. So we had those daily meetings. I also had regular contact with the AG outside of those 9 a.m. meetings. The DAG and I worked side by