Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/37

37 the end of the day I won't be the Attorney General anymore. But, again, that was sort of a common comment around this time period.

And he left sometime I think in the early afternoon, maybe around lunch or something like that. After he left, I was in DAG Rosen's office, and one of his staff members brought down his resignation letter. And she handed copies to me and DAG Rosen and said, you know, you two should know what's going on, he's going over to resign, he's had it, and you need to know what's going on because we don't know, you know, what's going to come out of this meeting.

Again, had the President fired Attorney General Barr at that meeting, then, by function of law, DAG Rosen would become the Acting Attorney General. So, as far as we knew, he could become the Acting Attorney General at any moment, and it was important that he know what the situation was.

So we sat in his office; we read the letter. It didn't surprise us. And then we sort of went back to work over the next few hours to wait to see what happened at the meeting.

And then did you get a summary of what happened at the meeting from AG Barr or anyone else about the conversation he had with the President in which he tendered his resignation?

Yes. Late that afternoon, he returned. I saw his detail in the courtyard. You can look down to the courtyard, and I knew his security detail, obviously.

I think I got a call from and she said, he wants you to come up. So I went up to the fifth floor, and I went into his office. I asked him if he was still the Attorney General, he said yes, and then he gave me a brief explanation of the meeting with the President.

Tell us what he said.