Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/38

38 He said that the meeting had gone as well as it could, that he had given his resignation letter to the President, the President appreciated the letter. It was sort of an amicable parting.

And then he said something to the effect of, now he's got to figure out who is going to be the Attorney General. That comment surprised me a little bit, because I assumed, and I think everyone else assumed, that Deputy Attorney General Rosen would be the Acting Attorney General upon AG Barr's departure.

And so I said, well, that will be the DAG. And he responded something to the effect of, "Maybe, maybe not. Your name came up. You should be prepared to get called over to the White House, I would think tomorrow morning. You should take tonight and think about what you want to do if he offers you the job."

All of this surprised me. I just kind of took it in. I said, okay. And then I went back to my office on the fourth floor.

Let me stop you there for a minute. Did he say anything more about discussion he had—he, Attorney General Barr—more discussion that he had with the President about allegations of election fraud or the Department's endeavors to investigate these allegations?

Not really. But if you look at the opening lines of his letter, it says something to the effect of, "I appreciate the opportunity to brief you today on how these investigations have gone and how they will go in the future," which I thought was a very intentional piece of wording on his part, saying that, look, this is what we going to do, this is what we are going to continue to do.

But he didn't give me the details of the discussion beyond just generally characterizing that it went as well as it could.

Yeah.