Page:CTRL0000034600 - Transcribed Interview of Richard Peter Donoghue, (Oct. 1, 2021).pdf/69

69 [12:06 p.m.]

Mr. Donoghue. So it was clear to us that the President didn't fully understand the Department's role in election matters. And we repeatedly tried to explain to him that, essentially, what we do is not quality control for State-run elections. That's not our role. We have primarily two roles: One is investigations of criminal conduct. And the other is civil rights litigation and related matters.

So, if a particular group is discouraged from voting or precluded from voting or something like that, that's certainly a legitimate DOJ concern, and we would act on that. If there is criminal conduct, such as fraudulent ballots, and things of that nature, that's also very much a DOJ concern.

Above and beyond that, defects in State-run elections are largely out of our hands and out of our responsibility. We could understand why the candidate, the campaign, and others have a real interest in that and have a cognizable interest in that, and so they brought these dozens of suits in part pursuant to those interests.

But, in many instances, as the President complained of in this conversation and others, the merits were never reached because the courts were finding that the plaintiff bringing the case didn't have standing. And so we had gone through this in more detail in a subsequent meeting in the Oval Office, but the President couldn't understand how the United States Department of Justice did not have standing to bring civil suits that challenge the way States conducted their elections. In his view, the client of a United States Department of Justice was the American people.

And we tried to explain to him, that's not really the case. The client of the United States Department of Justice is the United States Government, not the people directly.