(CNN) Two top former Justice Department officials sat for interviews with the Senate Judiciary Committee, providing detailed accounts of a tumultuous period in late December and early January during which a senior Justice Department lawyer sought to deploy the department's resources in support of false voting fraud claims by former President Donald Trump, according to a source familiar. Richard Donoghue, the acting Deputy Attorney General at the time, and Jeffrey Rosen, the acting Attorney General at the time, put Jeffrey Clark, a Donald Trump-appointed environment law chief at the Justice Department, at the center of an extraordinary effort to help Trump undermine the election results, including by ousting his bosses who were resisting Trump, according to the source. That included the January 3 White House meeting where Trump had the two men vie for the attorney general's job before deciding not to replace Rosen with Clark. Clark's attorney declined to comment to CNN. Donoghue met with the committee for about five hours Friday while Rosen met with them for more than six hours on Saturday, the source said, adding that Rosen also sat with the Justice Department Inspector General's investigators Friday.

Source: CNN August 07, 2021 23:15 UTC