By Dartunorro Clark and Kyle Stewart -
NBC News
The Congressional commission investigating the violent seizure of the Capitol on Jan.6 on Wednesday cited a former Justice Department attorney who
played a key role in then-President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The order seeks to obtain, before October 29, the sworn testimony and records of Jeffrey Clark, former acting chief of the civil division of the Department of Justice (DOJ for its acronym in English).
"The Special Committee needs to understand all the details about the previous Administration's attempts to delay the certification of the 2020 elections and amplify misinformation about the results," committee chair Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, said in a statement. .
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“We need to understand Mr. Clark's role in the Justice Department in support of these efforts
and to know who else in the Administration was involved.
The Special Committee hopes that Mr. Clark will cooperate fully with our investigation, ”he added.
A week ago, a nearly 400-page report, released by the Senate Judiciary Committee, set out a detailed timeline for Trump's campaign to
pressure DOJ officials to help him reverse Joe Biden's victory
.
The report's findings are based on the testimony of three former DOJ officials, as well as documents and emails.
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The report indicates that Trump wanted to replace the then acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, with
Clark, who devised with the president a strategy for the DOJ to intervene in the designation of Georgia's presidential voters
and use this model in other states.
Rosen and then-acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue rejected Clark's proposal, the document details.
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"The Special Committee's investigation has revealed credible evidence that you
attempted to involve the Department of Justice in efforts to disrupt a peaceful transfer of power
," the committee noted in its letter.
"You proposed that the Department send a letter to Georgia state legislators and other states suggesting that they delay the certification of their election results and that they hold a press conference announcing that the Department was investigating allegations of voter fraud," he explained.
Jeffrey Clark on Sept. 14, 2020.Susan Walsh / AP
In recent weeks, the committee has intensified its investigation, seeking records and testimony from top advisers to the Trump Administration, as well as from right-wing activists who organized rallies on or before January 6.
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Trump has pressured his collaborators and allies not to comply with the committee's requests.
The former president also tried to invoke executive privilege to prevent the committee from obtaining his records from the White House.
The Biden government, however, rejected his request.
White House Counselor Dana Remus said in a letter last Friday that the documents "shed light on events within the White House on and around January 6 and have to do with the Special Committee's need to
understand the facts behind the most serious attack on the operations of the federal government since the Civil War ”
.