The Jan. 6 committee has adjourned its fifth meeting.

The panel is set to hold at least two more hearings in July, where lawmakers are expected to detail the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s response.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) slammed his colleagues for peddling claims about rampant election fraud and begging for pardons from former President Donald Trump

“My colleagues and I up here also take an oath,” he said. “Some of them failed to uphold theirs, and instead chose to spread the big lie.”

“The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime,” he added.

Kinzinger pointed to evidence in testimony and documents that Reps. Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) asked for a pardon from Trump. He contrasted that with praise for the Justice Department officials who held their ground with former President Donald Trump after the election.

“Mr. Rosen Mr. Donohue stayed steadfastly committed to the oath they take as officials in the Department of Justice,” he proclaimed. “On January 6 itself, they assisted during the attack while our Commander in Chief stayed silent. Their bravery is a high moment.”

The Jan. 6 committee “confirmed” the top Defense Department official in the Trump administration placed a call to Italy about investigating a claim that Italian satellites were used to switch votes in the 2020 election, according to Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).

A clip was played during a hearing on Thursday in which former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller could be heard saying, “The ask for him was can you call out the defense attache Rome and find out what the heck is going on? Because I’m getting all these weird, crazy reports and probably the guy on the ground knows more than anything.”

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While former President Donald Trump was eyeing Jeffrey Clark as a replacement attorney general, he blurted out “Well, what do I have to lose.”

Then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue replied that he would resign if Trump did that. The president then turned to former Justice Department official Steve Engel and asked what he would do. Engel said he would resign.

“Mr. President, within … hours, you could have hundreds and hundreds of resignations of the leadership of your entire Justice Department, because of your actions, what’s that going to say about you,” Donoghue told the president.

Officials warned Trump that he could face a “graveyard” in the department amid massive resignations in protest over the prospects of Trump appointing Clark to head the department.

Rosen emphasized that he did not care if he was fired. His concern was who his replacement would be.

The issue was the use of the Justice Department. And it’s just so important at the Justice Department, and adhere to the facts and the law. That’s what it’s there to do. And that’s what our constitutional role was,” he explained.

“When you damage our fundamental institutions, It’s not easy to repair them. So I thought this was a really important issue to try to make sure that the Justice Department was able to stay on the right course,” he continued.

White House officials had already started referring to Jeffrey Clark as the acting attorney general despite the fact he had not been appointed to the role and Jeffrey Rosen still held the position, according to call logs obtained by the Jan. 6 committee.

They were shown during a hearing on Thursday, during which former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue testified about rejecting the proposition.

“What do I have to lose?” Trump said about appointing Clark, Donoghue testified.

Trump never went through appointing Clark as the acting attorney general after DOJ officials threatened to resign en masse.

“Mr. President, we’d resign immediately. I’m not working one minute for this guy, who I just declared was completely incompetent,” Donoghue said. “I’m telling you what’s going to happen. You’re gonna lose your entire department leadership. Every single one of us will walk out. Your entire department of leadership will walk out within hours.”

As former President Donald Trump grew more frustrated with the Justice Department, top officials considered expanding the “circle of people who knew what was going on.”

Officials were concerned that Trump was eyeing a replacement for then-acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and wanted to bring others such as former Justice Department official Steve Engel into the loop.

“It was very important that Steve Engel know and that’s why I reached out to Steve on December 28, because if Mr. Rosen were removed from the seat and the President did not immediately appoint someone else to serve as attorney general, just by the function of the department’s change in succession,” former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue told the Jan. 6 committee.

Assistant attorney generals in the department also huddled and agreed to threaten to “resign in mass” if Trump sought to change the leadership at the department.

(Graeme Jennings / Washington Examiner)

Actor Sean Penn was in attendance Thursday at a hearing before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Penn told reporters he was “just here to observe” as “a citizen” and was a guest of former D.C. police officer Michael Fanone.

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Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Former President Donald Trump had directed the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to seize voting machines in the aftermath of the 2020 election despite officials telling him they did not have the authority to do so.

During a meeting in late December, Trump asked DOJ officials to seize election machines, citing claims they had been hacked and led to a stolen election. However, officials told the former president there was “nothing wrong with the machines,” former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue said.

“I told them that the real experts that had been at DHS had briefed us that they had looked at it and that there was nothing wrong with the voting machines,” Donoghue said. “We had no factual basis to seize machines.”

Former President Donald Trump questioned whether the top officials at the Justice Department had been keeping up to date with election information being shared on the internet.

“You guys may not be following the internet the way I do,” he told Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, according to the Jan. 6 committee.

Trump, frustrated the department was not pursuing his election claims as aggressively as he wanted, was eyeing Jeffrey Clark as a replacement for former acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen.

“At this point, Mr. Clark had told us that the President had asked him to consider whether he would be willing to replace me,” Rosen recalled. “I had told Mr. Clark I thought he was making a colossal error in judgment.”

Former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen detailed Thursday during testimony before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot the pressure campaign then-President Donald Trump conducted toward officials at the Department of Justice to overturn the results of the 2020 election in his favor.

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Jeffrey Clark, then the top energy lawyer in the Department of Justice, approached other DOJ officials to send letters to multiple states containing false warnings the 2020 election may have been fraught with fraud and encouraging them to reconsider certifying the results, according to former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

Rosen refused to send the letter, prompting former President Donald Trump to consider replacing him with Clark. However, he ultimately backed down from that suggestion after several DOJ officials threatened to resign.

Read the draft letter in full below:

Former President Donald Trump suggested the Justice Department appoint controversial lawyer Sydney Powell as special counsel to investigate the election, according to Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).

“With only days to go until election certification it wasn’t to investigate anything,” Kinzinger said. “A special counsel would just create an illusion of legitimacy and provide fake cover for those who would want to object, including those who stormed the Capitol on January 6.”

Former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel Steven Engel argued a special counsel was unnecessary because the department did not have any conflicts of interest in the case.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who held the office from 2009 to 2015 under the Obama administration, blasted the lawyers who assisted former President Donald Trump in his efforts to urge the Justice Department to declare the election legitimate should be “disbarred.”

“All lawyers involved in the plot to stop the transfer of power as part of the 1/6 conspiracy must be disbarred,” Holder tweeted on Thursday.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) repeatedly texted former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to elevate Jeffery Clark within the Department of Justice so he could take the lead on pursuing claims of election fraud, according to text messages shown at the hearing on Thursday.

“Mark you should call Jeff,” one text purportedly reads. “I just got off the phone with him and he explained to me why the principal deputy won’t work especially with the FBI. They will view it as not having the authority to enforce what needs to be done.”

“Did you call Jeff Clark,” he wrote again the next day, the texts showed.

However, former President Donald Trump and some of his allies pushed for Clark, who was the DOJ’s top energy lawyer, to be promoted to acting attorney general so he could follow through with Trump’s requests to state publicly the 2020 election was “illegal” and “corrupt.”

The Jan. 6 committee returned from a brief recess.

Trump-linked lawyer John Eastman worked with Ken Klukowski, a lawyer in the Justice Department led by Jeffrey Clark, about a Georgia “proof of concept” letter, according to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY).

Then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue and then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen held a “contentious” meeting with Jeffrey Clark about his election claims, Donoghue recalled.

“What you are doing is nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election,” Donoghue recalled telling Clark during the meeting.

Donoghue had several other encounters with Clark, at one point seeking to quell Clark’s concerns that foreign interference affects the election.

“[He] said, ‘Well, okay, so there’s no foreign interference. I still think there are enough allegations out there that we should go ahead and send this letter,’ which shocked me even more,” Donoghue recalled.

During another encounter on Jan. 2, Clark continued to peddle election fraud concerns, Donoghue said.

“Similar to his earlier reaction when I said this is nothing less than Justice Department meddling in an election. His reaction was, ‘I think a lot of people have meddled in this election,’ and so we kind of clung to that and then spewed out some of these theories, some of which we’ve heard from the President,” Donoghue said.

The Jan. 6 committee will now break for a 10-minute recess and will return for continued testimony from former Justice Department officials.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Rudy Giuliani pushed former President Donald Trump to appoint people to the Justice Department to do his bidding in backing his claims of election fraud publicly without concern for damage to their reputation, the former Trump attorney said in video testimony.

Threats to his reputation were not why he rejected Trump’s requests to claim the election was “corrupt” and “illegal,” said former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue.

Among those who several Trump allies wanted to be elevated to attorney general was Jeffrey Clark, the DOJ’s top energy lawyer at the time, who supported the former president’s claims.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) introduced Jeffrey Clark to former President Donald Trump during the fallout from the 2020 election.

News that Perry made the introduction had been previously reported, but Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) showed clips from deposition indicating Perry advocated Clark helm the Justice Department.

“Beyond the president, I do recall saying to people that somebody should be put in charge at the Justice Department isn’t frightened of what’s going to be done to their reputation,” Rudy Giuliani said in a clip from his deposition.

Kinzinger asked former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen whether he was reluctant to pursue Trump’s election claims because he was concerned about his reputation.

“No, not at all,” he replied.

Former President Donald Trump told the Department of Justice to publicly back his claims of voter fraud despite having no evidence of substantial evidence, former DOJ officials testified.

“He said, essentially, that’s not what I’m asking you to do. I’m just asking you to say it was corrupt and ‘leave the rest to me and the Republican Congress,'” said former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue. “That’s an exact quote from the president.”

Although department officials repeatedly told Trump there was no evidence of fraud, the former president remained “adamant” that he won the election and the DOJ wasn’t “doing our job,” Donoghue said — which Trump said was to tell voters the election was illegal.

Richard Donoghue, who was serving as the acting United States deputy attorney general, began taking notes when former President Donald Trump called after the election.

Trump caught Donoghue off-guard with one of his election fraud claims, prompting the acting deputy attorney general to grab a notepad and start jotting notes down.

“That had to do with an allegation that more than 200,000 votes were certified in the state of Pennsylvania that were not actually cast,” Donoghue told the House select Jan. 6 committee.

Donoghue rejected most of Trump’s allegations, but he had not heard about that claim and later looked into it. Ultimately, he found none of Trump’s claims to be credible.

“Both the acting attorney general and I tried to explain to the president on this occasion and on several other occasions, that Justice Department has a very important, very specific but very limited role in these elections, states run their elections. We are not quality control for the states,” he explained.

The Jan. 6 committee has highlighted snippets of Donoghue’s notes during the hearing.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

While former President Donald Trump pushed the Department of Justice to back his allegations of voter fraud, officials told him in several conversations that the claims were “simply not true,” former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue said.

“He had this arsenal of allegations that he wanted to rely on and so I felt … it was incumbent on me to make it very clear to the president what our investigations had revealed,” he said. “That we had concluded based on actual investigations, actual witness interviews, actual reviews of documents, that these allegations simply had no merit. And I wanted to try to cut through the noise, because it was clear to us that there were a lot of people whispering in his ear, feeding him these conspiracy theories and allegations.”

Donoghue and other officials sat down with the president to go through allegations “piece by piece” to inform him that the DOJ had found no evidence of substantial fraud.

Reeling from his apparent election loss, former President Donald Trump toyed with the notion of having the Justice Department challenge the election results before the Supreme Court.

Jeffrey Rosen, who became acting attorney general in December 2020, following the departure of William Barr, recalled how Trump raised a number of actions the department could take to challenge the election.

“The common element of all of this was the President expressing his dissatisfaction that the Justice Department in his view had not done enough to investigate election fraud, but at different junctures,” Rosen said. “At one point he raised the whether the Justice Department would file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court.”

Trump also raised the prospects of Rosen meeting with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and reviewing a letter outlining election concerns that Jeffrey Clark wanted to send to state legislatures.

“I will say that the Justice Department declined,” Rosen said. “All of those requests that I was just referencing, because we did not think that they were appropriate based on the facts and the law as we understood them.”

During their Thursday hearing, House lawmakers will zoom in on a draft letter written by former Trump official Jeffrey Clark that would falsely warn states of election fraud and encourage legislatures to reconsider their results.

Clark, then an energy lawyer inside the DOJ, pushed Trump’s claims inside the department and urged former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to send the letter. Rosen refused.

Trump then considered replacing Rosen with Clark but backed off those efforts after several DOJ officials threatened to resign.

A key focus of the hearing will be on on Jeffrey Clark, an individual who former President Donald Trump considered tapping to become Attorney General.

Clark peddled plans to encourage state legislatures including in Georgia to challenge the election results. Rep. Liz Cheney mentioned a letter Clark promoted detailing plans to challenge the election during her opening remarks. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) also ripped Clark during his remarks.

“Jeff Clark, an environmental lawyer with no experience relevant to leading the entire Department of Justice. What was his only qualification that he would do whatever the President wanted him to do, including overthrowing a free and affair democratic election,” Kinzinger explained.

Kinzinger also played a clip of former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann blasting Clark.

“I said good luck in the whole congratulations just a minute the first step or act to take us attorney general would be committing a felony,” he recalled telling Clark in clip from his deposition. “You’re clearly the right candidate for this job.”

Former President Donald Trump‘s efforts to pressure the Department of Justice to back his claims of voter fraud threatened the country’s system of free and fair elections, lawmakers said on Thursday.

“Their only hope would be a last-ditch scheme to prevent Congress from certifying the election, thus throwing the entire system in constitutional chaos,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). “The president wanted the department to sow doubt in the legitimacy of the election to empower his followers and members of Congress to take action.”

Kinzinger is one of two Republicans on the committee, along with Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected the two lawmakers chosen by GOP leaders because of their defense of after the riot.

Former Attorney General William Barr defended the Justice Department considering claims of election fraud in a deposition clip played by the House select Jan. 6 committee.

Barr stressed the country may not have “had a transition” if the department was not reviewing the situation.

“I think the fact that I put myself in the position that I could say that we had looked at this and didn’t think that was fraud was really important to moving things forward,” he said. “I sort of shudder to think what the situation would have been if the position of the department was, ‘We’re not even looking at this until after Biden’s in office.'”

“I’m not sure we would have had a transition at all,” he added.

L.E. Baskow/AP

The FBI has seized the cellphone of the Nevada Republican Party chairman as part of an investigation into a fake elector scheme, according to a report Thursday.

Michael McDonald, the top official in the Nevada GOP, is being looked into as part of a wider investigation scrutinizing a plan to send illegitimate electors to cast the state’s six electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election, according to a report from a CBS affiliate in Las Vegas.

Click here to read the full report.

Graeme Jennings, Washington Examiner

Actor Sean Penn is in the audience of those attending the Jan. 6 hearing, telling reporters he is “just here to observe” a guest of former police officer Michael Fanone.

Fanone was severely injured while guarding the Capitol during the Jan. 6 hearing.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) will lead the questioning during the public hearing Thursday. The congressman is one of two Republicans on the committee and has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump.

The Jan. 6 committee has begun its hearing, opening with statements teasing new evidence lawmakers have uncovered they say will show former President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to push the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election.

“We’ve already covered part of Mr. Trump’s efforts,” said committee chairman Bennie Thompson. “Mr. Trump didn’t just want the Justice Department to investigate. He wanted them to validate his lies.”

British documentary filmmaker Alex Holder who turned over a trove of footage to the House select Jan. 6 committee last week, is adamant that former President Donald Trump did not have editorial control.

Holder tweeted a clip of Trump barking off orders to staff about a table and water positioned next to him. Holder also noted he was fully cooperating with the committee.

Yuri Gripas/AP

Federal agents searched the home of a former Trump Justice Department official involved in attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Investigators searched the home of Jeffrey Clark in Lorton, Virginia, on Wednesday. Clark was a key player in former President Donald Trump‘s effort to get the Justice Department to support his claims of widespread election fraud.

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Susan Walsh/AP

A top investigator for the House Jan. 6 committee is reportedly departing from his role this week, earlier than anticipated.

John Wood, a senior investigative counsel on the committee, confirmed his departure to CNN, but he declined to elaborate on why he was moving on from the role as rumors swirl that he has been encouraged to run for the open Senate seat in Missouri.

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Federal agents issued a fresh batch of subpoenas Wednesday against political activists who supported former President Donald Trump‘s efforts to overturn election results in at least two states, according to a new report.

Agents “conducted court authorized law enforcement” at the home of Brad Carver, a Georgia lawyer, and Thomas Lane, who helped the Trump campaign, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing FBI officials. This indicates the inquiry is examining the use of alternative electors during the aftermath of the election, according to the outlet.

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Two congressional Democrats conceded that voters don’t care about the Jan. 6 committee hearings, according to a reporter who spoke with them.

Politico national correspondent Betsy Woodruff Swan shared what she heard as Capitol Hill gears up for the 2022 midterm elections during a segment Wednesday on the streaming service NBC News NOW. The exchange took place as the Jan. 6 committee is in the midst of holding a slate of summer hearings in which members are working to tie former President Donald Trump‘s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results to the Capitol riot.

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Al Drago/AP

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol is set to hold its fifth hearing and will focus on evidence lawmakers say show former President Donald Trump tried to use the Department of Justice to bolster his claims that the presidential election was stolen.

Thursday’s hearing will feature testimony from several Trump-era Justice Department officials who will testify how the former president and his allies pressed the department to back his claims of election fraud publicly to give them credibility despite lacking evidence.

The three witnesses set to testify are former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and the head of the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is standing by his decision to pull all of his selections for the Jan. 6 select committee after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) blocked Reps. Jim Banks (R-IN) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) from sitting on the panel last July.

Former President Donald Trump has both privately and publicly taken aim at the California Republican in recent days, voicing frustrations that his congressional allies are not able to defend him during the televised hearings on the investigation into the riot at the Capitol, and has made it clear that he has not yet endorsed him to be the next speaker.

“I think in retrospect, [McCarthy should’ve put Republicans on] to just have a voice. The Republicans don’t have a voice. They don’t even have anything to say,” Trump told Punchbowl News.

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