Updated June 23, 2022:
The Justice Department is not supposed to do the personal political bidding of the president, but that's exactly what Donald Trump asked it to do, according to what we're likely to hear from the committee today. Panel aides have said that the hearing will lay out how the former president wanted the DOJ to publicly state there was election fraud.
Catch up before the 3 p.m. hearing begins:
- What to expect: You'll hear more video testimony from former Attorney General Bill Barr, who told Trump the election fraud claims were nonsense and then resigned in December 2021 — and the committee will also show how Trump asked the Justice Department to file lawsuits with his campaign on behalf of those baseless claims.
- Who will testify: Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue. Both refused to throw Justice's weight behind strategies that would overturn the election results. Also to appear is Steven Engel, who headed DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel.
- What we're likely to hear: That the former president misused the department to try to cling to power and that he tried to get the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to probe fraud and join lawsuits to help the Trump campaign. Also expect to hear more about environmental lawyer Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who was reportedly more willing to go along with Trump's fraudulent claims of a stolen election, and about a Jan. 3 meeting at the White House, when virtually the entire DOJ leadership team threatened to resign if Trump appointed Clark as attorney general.
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