Trump-era Justice Department leader Jeff Rosen has agreed to testify at House January 6 hearing

Jeff Rosen DOJ — Former acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen has already testified about Trump's efforts to pressure DOJ.
Yuri Gripas-Pool/Getty Images

Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general in the final weeks of the Trump administration, has agreed to testify publicly.
Rosen has been interviewed by the Jan. 6 committee about Trump pressing the Justice Department to support efforts to discredit the 2020 election results.
Rosen's former top deputy and another ex-Justice Department official will also testify.

Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general in the final weeks of the Trump administration, has agreed to testify publicly before the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Rosen and other former Justice Department officials were invited to testify as the House panel prepared to present its findings from the yearlong investigation, but they were unable to immediately accept without the department's sign-off. During the investigation, Rosen sat for an interview behind closed doors and recounted to the House committee how he came under persistent pressure from former President Donald Trump to throw the weight of the Justice Department behind the former president's effort to discredit the 2020 election results.

Rosen is set to testify on June 15 with two other former Justice Department officials: His onetime top deputy, Richard Donoghue, and Steve Engel, who led the department's Office of Legal Counsel under the Trump administration.

On Thursday, the House January 6 committee held a primetime hearing to lay out its findings from the months-long investigation into the Capitol attack. Previewing the June 15 hearing, Cheney said the panel would highlight how "President Donald Trump corruptly planned to replace the Attorney General of the United States so the U.S. Justice Department would spread his false stolen election claims."

In a closed-door deposition with the House committee last year, Rosen recalled how a once-obscure Trump appointee, Jeffrey Clark, emerged inside the Justice Department as a supporter of the former president's false claims of widespread voter fraud. Clark drafted a letter to legislatures in key battleground states informing them that the Justice Department was investigating purported voter irregularities related to the election, but Rosen refused to sign it.

Trump considered ousting Rosen and installing Clark as the new acting leader of the Justice Department, but the former president stood down after officials threatened to resign if he followed through with the move. During an intense Oval Office meeting, a top Justice Department official cautioned that Clark would be leading a "graveyard" if appointed as acting attorney general.

Cheney on Thursday noted that, in the days before January 6, 2021, Trump told Justice Department leaders to,
"Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen."

But Cheney said the senior Justice Department leaders, "men he had appointed, told him they could not do that, because it was not true. So President Trump decided to replace them."

Donoghue also appeared before the House committee for a closed-door deposition and described — in occasionally unsparing terms — how officials were struck by Clark's conduct and considered him unfit for the acting attorney general role. Recalling the Oval Office meeting, Donoghue said he noted to Trump that Clark lacked experience with criminal law.

Clark, the Senate-confirmed head of the Justice Department's environmental, countered that he had handled complicated civil cases and appeals, according to Donoghue's recollection.

"And I said, 'That's right. You're an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we'll call you when there's an oil spill,'" Donoghue told the House January 6 committee.

Rosen and Donoghue previously testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and both have cooperated with a Washington, DC, legal body's ethics probe into Clark.

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