Page:Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.pdf/417

 approach had largely failed, and no legislatures had sent a second lawful slate of electors for Trump to Congress. Clearly, President Trump and his campaign team could not get the job done. So, the President and those around him sought to use the hefty imprimatur of the U.S. Department of Justice to achieve the same thing. No doubt, a letter coming from the Department of Justice is different from a meandering call from Giuliani or one of his associates. And, because it was December 28th and there was little more than a week until the January 6th joint session of Congress, President Trump needed more, and soon. Clark's letter, which laid out a plan that was almost identical to what President Trump and his team had pressured State officials to carry out virtually since election day, could have been just what President Trump needed.

Several examples demonstrate the parallels between President Trump's and Rudolph Giuliani's approach to overturning the election in November and December, and what Clark proposed in this letter. First, the letter sought to have the Georgia State legislature convene a special session to focus on allegations of fraud in the election. Giuliani and his team had been making calls to State legislatures and telling them in both official and unofficial State legislature committee hearings that State legislatures should convene in special sessions. They also argued that State legislatures had the authority to convene a special session themselves, despite limitations in State law requiring such a session to be convened by the governor. Clark included the same argument in his draft letter.

Additionally, the draft letter recommended that the Georgia legislature consider choosing the alternate—fake—slate of electoral college electors that sent fake electoral college votes to Congress and Vice President Pence. Having State legislatures choose Trump electors in States where President Trump lost was one of the Trump team's early goals immediately after the election, but it didn't work. When no State legislature appointed its own set of electors before December 14th, the Trump Campaign arranged for electors to meet in contested States anyway and cast fake electoral college votes. This letter, with the Department of Justice seal at the top, was just one more way that President Trump and those close to him could pressure State officials to send competing electoral college votes to Congress for consideration during the joint session, despite former Vice President Biden's certified victory in each of the contested States.

Despite the similarities between the requests in Clark's proposed letter and the requests that President Trump and his team made to State officials for nearly 2 months, the extent to which Clark directly coordinated his actions with the Trump Campaign and its outside advisors is unclear. Clark asserted his Fifth Amendment rights and various other privileges to avoid