Former senior Justice Department official Richard Donoghue says he has been interviewed by special counsel Jack Smith’s office but has not been called to testify before the federal grand jury investigating Jan. 6 and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Donoghue, who confirmed the meeting with Smith’s office to NBC News on Monday, served as acting deputy attorney general toward the end of the Trump administration. He later testified before the Jan. 6 House committee that investigated the Capitol riot.
The special counsel’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night.
In testimony before the House panel last year, Donoghue said that weeks before the attack on the Capitol, Trump had urged Justice Department officials, including acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, to “say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican congressmen.”
Donoghue and Rosen told the committee on Jan. 6 that they repeatedly rebuffed Trump’s efforts, and that he later threatened to replace Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, an ally who had written a letter casting doubt on the results of the 2020 election and urging states to certify fake voter rolls.
On Jan. 6, committee chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., called Trump’s efforts, as Donoghue described them at the time, “a brazen attempt to use the Justice Department to advance the president’s personal political agenda.”
Donoghue also testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in August 2021 and was asked about a video circulated after the 2020 election by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that alleged intelligence agencies had used Italian military satellites to change votes in the election.
“Some of them were pretty far-fetched, like this one,” Donoghue said, according to one interview transcript. “And when I looked at the video, I think it was a YouTube video of about 20 minutes or something, it seemed pretty off the wall, partly because it was so conclusive and didn’t really offer any evidence.”
Donoghue, who is now there private practicecalled the video “pure insanity” in an email to Rosen.
The former president and his allies have repeatedly accused the Biden administration of arming the Justice Department amid Trump’s legal woes, which have so far resulted in two indictments: one from a New York City grand jury focused on cash payments he allegedly made during his 2016 campaign and the other a federal case stemming from his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.
Trump said last week that he had received a letter from Smith informing him that he is the target of a federal grand jury investigation into the Jan. 6 riots and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
