Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/64

64 you were familiar up to that point?

That's right. I had no reason to think he had any involvement in any election matters.

And his substantive responsibility as head of the Civil Division would not put him in a position to be involved in any of those investigations. Is that right?

Correct.

Okay.

All right. Keep going, then, in terms of what the President said.

So, again, I tried to be very direct with the President at this point. I said, sir, you should have whatever leadership you want in the Department, but understand, changing leadership is not going to change the outcome. The Department acts on facts and evidence. And the facts are what they are, the evidence is what it is, and it's not going to change.

At that point, the President said, "You, Rich, should go to Fulton County and do a signature verification, and you'll see how illegal it is. You'll find tens of thousands" of illegal ballots. I didn't respond to that.

The President then continued, there are "more votes than voters." Somehow Wisconsin came up. I guess he cited Wisconsin and some claim that there were more votes than registered voters in Wisconsin. But I was aware of that allegation, and I said, you know, that was just a matter of them "comparing the 2020 votes cast to 2016 registration numbers." That is "not a valid complaint." The voter rolls grow cycle after cycle, and that's just normal population growth.

And the President said, "Nobody trusts the FBI." That's also a quote. He said, we need other people to look at this, to work on this.

And then he went back to Fulton County and said, "I'd like to request" that you go