Former U.S. prosecutor says Trump wanted to fire him for failing to support election fraud allegations

As Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark argued at the meeting over which man should head the Justice Department and whether the Department should intervene in Georgia, Mr. Trump intervened with complaints about the department’s official conclusion according to which state election results were valid, according to three people briefed on the meeting. Mr Trump ultimately decided not to elevate Mr Clark, and the ministry did not send Georgian officials a letter seeking to undermine Mr Biden’s victory.

Immediately after the Sunday evening meeting in the Oval Office, Justice Department No. 2 official Richard P. Donoghue emailed Mr. Pak at 10:09 p.m. saying, “Please call as soon as possible,” according to documents the House Oversight and Reform Committee obtained from the Department of Justice and released in June.

During that phone call, Mr. Donoghue indicated that Mr. Trump remains obsessed with the misconception that he has won Georgia, and said the president is angry that Mr. Pak did not support this conclusion. , according to someone familiar with the call.

Early the next morning, Mr. Pak sent Mr. Donoghue resignation letters addressed to Mr. Trump and Mr. Rosen, in effect immediately.

Connecticut Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal said on Wednesday that Mr. Pak had “answered all questions in a seemingly honest and frank manner, and I suspect he believes in the rule of law and that he stood up for it.

Mr. Blumenthal and Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, were among a handful of committee members who listened to all of Mr. Pak’s testimony.

While the panel’s investigation is ongoing, it has completed its first round of interviews. They included Mr. Pak, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Rosen, who spoke with the committee for nearly seven hours and with the Inspector General of the Department of Justice for about two hours.

Mr. Clark did not say if he would come for an interview, and the committee did not indicate who else he wanted to speak to. The Justice Department has said it will not invoke executive privilege if former officials are asked to testify before congressional investigators.