Jan. 6 committee delays hearing
Former DOJ officials pressured by Trump were set to appear
WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol postponed a hearing that was to feature dramatic testimony from former Justice Department officials who were pressured by then-President Donald Trump to pursue his false election fraud theories.
The hearing had been scheduled for Wednesday, but the committee Tuesday morning said that it had been delayed. A spokesman for the panel attributed the postponement to “a number of scheduling factors, including production timeline and availability of members and witnesses.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican member of the committee, said on Twitter that the hearing had been moved to next week as a way to “space out” the testimony surrounding the insurrection, when crowds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.
The committee has held two hearings, including a prime-time one last week that featured never-beforeseen video of extremists leading the deadly siege. Another hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
The witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing were to include Jeffrey Rosen, who was the acting attorney general at the time of the Capitol insurrection, as well as two other former top officials at the Justice Department, Richard Donoghue and Steven Engel. Lawyers for all three men did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
The witnesses, all of whom have since left the agency, are expected to testify about how Trump sought to bend the department to his political will during the final days of his administration by urging officials to declare the election as corrupt and to aid in his efforts to challenge the results of the race won by Biden, a Democrat.
Though the lawyers’ accounts have been documented by the news media, the hearing will give the American public its most detailed glimpse of a near-revolt inside the Justice Department as Trump contemplated replacing the agency’s top official with a lower-level lawyer seen as more willing to advance the president’s false claims that the election was stolen. Several other senior officials warned Trump in a White House meeting that they’d resign if the leadership change occurred.
Rosen took over the department following the December 2020 departure of William Barr, who angered Trump by saying the department had not found fraud that could have affected the results of the election. Trump quickly soured on Rosen, too, after the then-acting attorney general rejected entreaties from the president and the White House to challenge the election results.
Around that time, the president was introduced by Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican and ardent Trump backer, to Jeffrey Clark, a little-known assistant attorney general who postured himself as willing to advance Trump’s baseless voting fraud claims.
At one point, according to testimony provided to lawmakers, Clark presented colleagues with a draft letter pushing Georgia officials to convene a special legislative session on the election results. Clark wanted the letter sent, but superiors at the Justice Department refused.
A lawyer for Clark did not immediately return a phone message Wednesday.
Clark’s support led Trump to openly contemplate naming him as acting attorney general in place of Rosen.
The situation came to a head during a tense, hourslong Jan. 3, 2021, meeting at the White House in which Engel and Donoghue told Trump they would resign from the Justice Department if Trump proceeded with his plan to fire Rosen and replace him with Clark.
Trump ultimately relented, and Rosen remained on as acting attorney general through the end of the administration.
In related news Tuesday:
Police have determined there was nothing suspicious about a tour of two U.S. Capitol office buildings that a House Republican gave to about 15 people the day before Jan. 6, 2021, when rioting supporters of then-President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol.
The House committee investigating the 2021 insurrection examined whether rioters had been involved in reconnaissance and surveillance before the attack, and Democrats suggested some Republican members may have helped them.
However, there has been no public evidence of that.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Republican from Georgia, was simply showing his constituents around, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger wrote in a letter sent Monday.
Capitol Police say the tour was thoroughly examined and there was nothing suspicious about it.
A former city councilman in West Virginia was sentenced Tuesday to 45 days in prison for breaching the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
Eric Barber, 43, was sentenced by a federal judge in Washington for his December guilty plea to a misdemeanor count of illegally entering the Capitol, news outlets reported.
Barber also was given a seven-day sentence, which the judge suspended, for stealing a portable battery charger from a media stand inside the Capitol.
Barber was ordered to pay $500 restitution for damage done to the Capitol and for the cost of the charger.
Barber is among more than 80 defendants sent to prison for offenses related to the attack on the Capitol, according to an Associated Press analysis of sentencing data. More than 800 cases have been brought so far in the largest prosecution in DOJ history.