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

A hard-right conservative member of the House and leader of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Penn., has been one of Trump's most loyal supporters in Congress.

As the Jan. 6 committee laid out Thursday, that support continued after the 2020 election, when he was among the Republicans who met with Trump at the White House on Dec. 21, 2020, on how to continue challenging Joe Biden's victory and push claims of voter fraud.

The next day, Perry introduced Jeffery Clark to Trump in a White House meeting. Clark did not work on election issues at the Justice Department, and he met with the president without the knowledge of his superiors in violation of DOJ rules.

"So, for criminal matters, the policy for a long time has been the only the attorney general in the deputy attorney general from the DOJ side can have ... conversations with the White House," Jeffrey Rosen, the then-acting attorney general, told the committee.

Why was Clark recommended? Here's how Rudy Giuliani explained it, in his recorded interview with the committee: “I do recall saying to people that somebody should be put in charge of the Justice Department who isn't frightened of what is going to be done to their reputation.”

Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general at the time, said Perry wanted Clark to "take over" the Justice Department, and pushed Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff and his former House colleague, to make it happen.

-ABC News' Benjamin Siegel

Former top Justice Department officials recalled being sent a 20-minute video on a far-right election conspiracy theory alleging Italy facilitated election interference, which former deputy acting attorney general Richard Donoghue called "patently absurd."

"I emailed the acting attorney general and said, 'pure insanity.' That was my impression of the video, which was patently absurd," he said.

The committee showed with texts how Rep. Scott Perry, R-Penn., whom Vice Chair Liz Cheney said in the first June hearing sought a presidential pardon from the White House in the days following the Jan. 6 attack, texted the conspiracy theory involving Italy to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

"The select committee confirmed that a call was actually placed by Secretary [of Defense Chris] Miller to the attaché in Italy to investigate the claim that Italian satellites were switching votes from Trump to Biden. This is one of the best examples of the leaks to which President Trump would go to stay in power," said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.

Former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and his former deputy Richard Donoghue described Thursday how Trump tried to get the Department of Justice to seize voting machines in late 2020.

Donoghue said an "agitated" Trump called an emergency meeting on New Year's Eve to make the request.

"There was nothing wrong with them so we told him no," Rosen told the committee. "There was no factual basis nor was there any legal authority to do so."

"Toward the end of the meeting, the president, again, was getting very agitated," Donoghue recalled. "And he said, 'People tell me I should just get rid of both of you, I should just remove you and make a change in leadership, put Jeff Clark in, maybe something will finally get done.'"

After detailing an effort by Jeffrey Clark to replace acting attorney general Jeff Rosen in order to help Trump overturn the election, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., turned to former top DOJ lawyer Steven Engel on other efforts by Trump to pressure the department.

After Trump sent a proposed draft lawsuit, done outside the department, to top DOJ attorneys that he wanted to send to the Supreme Court, Engel called it a "meritless lawsuit" and an "unusual request" that the department would never bring.

"Obviously, even the person who drafted this lawsuit didn't really understand in my view the law, and or how the Supreme Court works or the Department of Justice," Engel said.

Trump and the White House also asked the Department of Justice if it could point a special counsel to look at widespread election fraud -- which did not exist -- with Engel detailing why "that was not legally available," before Kinzinger claimed Trump even offered the position of special counsel to campaign attorney Sidney Powell, as his pressure campaign continued.