In the most damning evidence yet that former President Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election but was still willing to abuse his office to remain in power, a former top Department of Justice official testified Thursday that Trump told the DOJ to "just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican congressmen.”
Thursday’s groundbreaking congressional testimony came from former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, one of a handful of ex-DOJ officials who stood up to Trump in his final days in office and refused to have the department misused this way.
Donoghue’s handwritten notes of his interactions with the former president were presented at the Jan. 6 Committee’s fifth public hearing on Thursday, where legislators on the panel announced that several fellow members of Congress eventually sought presidential pardons for their role in Trump’s wide-ranging plan to stay in office.
