Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/59

59 corrupt, that he's asking, essentially, not for you to resolve all of these specific allegations, but just say that the election was corrupt, leave the rest to this political strategy?

Right. So the Department had zero involvement in anyone's political strategy. I think he understood that, right?

Uh-huh.

So he wanted us to say it was corrupt, you know, for whatever reason. I'll leave that to him or others to explain or determine. But he wanted us to say that it was corrupt.

And this was consistent with some things he said at other points about, the Department should publicly say that the election is corrupt or suspect or not reliable. At one point, he mentioned the possibility of having a press conference. We told him we were not going to do that.

Yeah.

So this was something that was brought up more than once.

Yeah. So, again, there was a focus on public statements that something was corrupt, as opposed to trying specifically to get to the bottom of the individual allegations.

Right.

All right. You at this point start talking. Is that right? You directly—"RPD" I assume, Mr. Donoghue, refers to statements that you now made on the call.

Yes. So I tried to, again, put this in perspective and to try to put it in very clear terms to the President. And I said something to the effect of, "Sir, we've done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations are not