Testimony of top Trump Justice Department officials showed how far he was willing to go to get the department illegally involved in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results — including the appointment of the unqualified Jeffrey Clark as AG.
The crucial moment during the fifth day of hearings by the House committee investigating January 6 was when Steven Engel, former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, testified about a bizarre meeting between the president and the top brass of the Justice Department on January 3, 2021. Trump had called the meeting to weigh the idea of replacing his acting attorney general, Jay Rosen (whose seat was barely warm after replacing Attorney General William Barr, who’d resigned in exasperation over Trump’s election-fraud fables), with Jeffrey Clark, a former environmental lawyer serving as acting assistant attorney general.
