(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
On Monday, Donald Trump’s lawyer Doug Collins fired off a nastygram to multiple former Justice Department Officials greenlighting their testimony in a House investigation of the events leading up to the January 6 Insurrection.
“Please be advised that the Department’s purported waiver and authorization are unlawful, and that President Trump continues to assert that the non-public information the Committees seek is and should be protected from disclosure by the executive privilege,” Collins wrote to former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, although he eventually conceded that “President Trump will agree not to seek judicial intervention to prevent your testimony[.]”
After the DOJ told Rosen and several other potential witnesses that it would be inappropriate to claim privilege in the January 6 inquiry, Trump faced the uncertain prospect of attempting to make a post-presidential assertion of executive privilege on his own account. So instead his legal team contented themselves with threatening the witnesses with fire and brimstone if congress decides to call more witnesses — as if Jeff Rosen controls House Democrats.
Everything will be fine “so long as the committees do not seek privileged information from any other Trump administration officials or advisors,” the old man yelled at the cloud. “If the committees do seek such information, however, we will take all necessary and appropriate steps, on President Trump’s behalf, to defend the Office of the Presidency.”
Rosen’s former deputy Patrick Hovakimian promptly sat down the next morning with House Oversight Committee staff for a transcribed interview, Politico reports, and multiple other witnesses are already scheduled.
But Collins hadn’t quite given up the ghost. Continuing the long Trump tradition of gesturing vaguely in the direction of executive privilege without actually invoking it, the former congressman called up Fox News Tuesday, just to put it out there that these witnesses can just refuse to answer questions on their own. You know, if they don’t feel like answering for some reason.
“We’ve always stood up for this privilege, except in this case and only under these terms,” Collins said, referring to the DOJ’s refusal to order its former officials to keep quiet.
“I would hope they would honor that,” he said, when asked if Rosen and the other witnesses should testify about Trump’s efforts to use the DOJ to overturn the will of the voters. “The former president still believes those are privileged communications that are covered under executive privilege.”
So Monday he threatened to go apeshit if any further witnesses are called. And Tuesday he unsubtly asked the current witnesses to keep playing the executive-privilege-but-not-really game with congress. Very cool, very legal.
It’s not clear whether Collins’s gambit will work. In March, Rosen refused to answer congressional queries about his conversations with the president, saying “When you ask me about communications with the president, I as a lawyer don’t get to make the decision on whether I can reveal private conversations. Other people make that decision, and I’ve been asked today to stick to within the ground rules that I have to abide by.” When asked by Rep. Gerry Connolly to explain who exactly those “other people” were, Rosen declined to elaborate.
But even if some witnesses decline to cooperate with congressional investigations, the truth is all coming out. Politico got a copy of a January 3, 2021 resignation letter drafted by Hovakimian for himself and Richard Donoghue to be released to all senior colleagues in the event that Trump made good on his threats to oust Rosen in favor of Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ official who hoped to use the Department to ratfuck the election and keep Trump in the White House.
“This evening, after Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen over the course of the last week repeatedly refused the President’s direct instructions to utilize the Department of Justice’s law enforcement powers for improper ends, the President removed Jeff from the Department,” Hovakimian wrote. “PADAG Rich Donoghue and I resign from the Department, effective immediately.”
Trump was dissuaded from making Clark acting AG after his entire senior legal team threatened to resign, so Hovakimian and Donoghue never had to send the email. But they’re certainly going to be asked about “direct instructions to utilize the Department of Justice’s law enforcement powers for improper ends” when they sit down for a chat with congress. And Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney has already released Donoghue’s contemporaneous notes of the phone call in which Trump demanded that Rosen “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.”
So good luck keeping all that under wraps by mumbling something about executive privilege. As Collins himself might say, in his inimitable corn fried auctioneer voice, that dog won’t hunt.
Top DOJ official drafted resignation email amid Trump election pressure [Politico]
Trump foreshadows executive privilege fight in election investigations, but won’t try to block testimony yet [Fox News]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.