High drama as Jan. 6 hearing details Trump's effort to corrupt Justice Department

The committee played a video of former Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann recalling what he said he told Jeffrey Clark, a lower-level DOJ official overseeing environmental law enforcement, who supported Trump's proposal to have him become acting attorney general to help overturn the election results.

"When he finished discussing what he planned on doing, I said '[expletive], congratulations. You just admitted your first step you would take as AG would be committing a felony," Herschmann said. "'You're clearly the right candidate for this job.'"

"I told Clark the only thing he knew was that environmental and election both start with "e," and I'm not even sure you know that," he added.

In audio testimony, former deputy acting attorney general Richard Donoghue also recalled telling Clark, "Go back to your office, we'll call you when there's an oil spill," and calling the draft letter he wanted to send swing states to appoint alternate slates "a murder-suicide pact."

Rosen and Donoghue were detailing a two-and-half Oval Office meeting where Trump repeatedly pressed but was eventually dissuaded from his plan to install Clark atop the Justice Department to pursue baseless allegations of voter fraud just days before Congress was set to convene to certify Biden's victory.

Vice-chair Liz Cheney focused her opening statement Thursday on teasing a draft letter that Trump and former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark wanted the department to send to Georgia officials citing already disproven allegations of fraud.

"As you will see, this letter claims that the U.S. Department of Justice's investigations have 'identified significant concerns hat may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia,'" Cheney said. "In fact, Donald Trump knew this was a lie. The Department of Justice had already informed the president of the United States repeatedly that its investigations had found no fraud sufficient to overturn the results of the 2020 election."

ABC News obtained and published the draft letter in full last year. Read it here.

Cheney also said the public today will see video testimony by three members of Trump's White House staff identifying certain members of Congress who contacted the White House after Jan. 6 to "seek presidential pardons for their conduct."

Three former top officials in the Justice Department -- former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, former deputy acting attorney general Richard Donoghue and former top DOJ lawyer Steven Engel -- sat before lawmakers Thursday as Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., convened the fifth public hearing this month.

"Today, we'll tell the story of how the pressure campaign also targeted the federal agency charged with enforcement of our laws, the Department of Justice," Thompson said, going to call it "a brazen attempt to use the Justice Department to advance the president's professional and personal agenda."

All three witnesses are expected to detail how they resisted Trump and his allies' repeated entreaties to enlist the Justice Department in his failed bid to overturn his election loss.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger will lead questioning in today’s hearing, committee aides confirmed to reporters. Kinzinger is one of the two Republicans on the nine-member committee.

"The threat to our democracy is real. And today, we'll see just how close we came to losing it all," Kinzinger tweeted ahead of the hearing. "Tune in as we uncover President Trump’s pressure campaign on [the Justice Department] in his desperate attempt to subvert the will of the people to stay in power."