Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/52

52 is a phone call with you and Mr. Rosen. It's just the three of you—you and the President and Mr. Rosen?

As far as I know. I don't know of anyone else being on that call.

And he is frustrated with you. Like, the theme here is that you all, meaning the Department of Justice—

That's correct.

—are not doing anything, are not doing enough to investigate these very serious allegations of fraud.

"DOJ failing to respond to legitimate complaints/reports of crimes." seems to, sort of, summarily describe his general view about the Department's inaction during this period of time. Is that right?

Yes, that's right.

Okay. And is he encouraging you to do something? Is the purpose of the call, in your view, hey, you've got to look at this, you know, do more along these lines?

I will say, throughout this call and really throughout all the conversations at this point, there was no point at which the President directed us to do something specific. He didn't say, I want you to open a file, I want you to interview this witness, or whatever it is. But it was very clear that he thought we should be doing more than he believed we were doing.

Yeah.

Now, that might have been due in some part to the fact that we didn't tell him everything we were doing. DAG Rosen and I had had several discussions about what our general approach would be with the President. And, as a general matter, we said we were going to hear him out, and to the extent he raised things that we were aware of, we would simply respond, "Yes, sir, we're aware of that." If we had done