The Justice Department is not supposed to do the personal political bidding of the president, but that’s exactly what Donald Trump asked it to do, according to what we’re likely to hear from the committee today. Panel aides have said that the hearing will lay out how the former president wanted the DOJ to publicly state there was election fraud.
Here’s what we’re following:
- Who is Jeffrey Clark? A former environmental lawyer in the Justice Department, Clark was sympathetic to the president’s false claims about rampant voter fraud in the 2020 election. Trump had reportedly mused about firing the then-acting attorney general and replacing him with Clark.
- Authorities search Clark’s home: Federal enforcement officials searched Clark’s suburban Virginia home on Wednesday.
- The panel hears from a filmmaker: British documentarian Alex Holder said he testified behind closed doors with the Jan. 6 committee on Thursday morning. Holder filmed the former president, his family and aides for weeks around the 2020 election and interviewed them even beyond the Jan. 6 insurrection.