Rep. Kinzinger: Pat Cipollone told the select committee that he intervened when he heard Mr. Clark was meeting with the president about legal maters without his knowledge, which was strictly against White House policy. Pat Cippollone and Pat Philbin told Mr. Clark to stand down and he didn't.
- Pat Cippollone: Former White House Counsel
- Pat Philbin: Former Deputy White House counsel
Rep. Kinzinger: On the same day, acting AG Rosen told Jeff Clark to stop talking to the White House. Rep. Perry was urging Mark Meadows to elevate Jeff Clark within the DoJ.
Text messages between Rep. Perry and Mark Meadows are shown.
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Kinzinger to Donoghue:
- Q: Rep. Perry called you the next day on December 27th. Who told him to call you?
- A: My understanding is the president did. At the outset of the call, the congressman Perry (I believe this is what he said) told me that he was calling at the behest of the president.
- Q: What did he want to talk about?
- A: He wanted to talk about Pennsylvania in particular. He gave me some background about why he in particular doesn't trust the FBI, about why the American people don't trust the FBI. and then he went into some allegations specific about Pennsylvania, which included, amongst others, this allegation that the secretary of state had certified more votes than were actually cast.
- Q: Did you direct the local US attorney's office to investigate that claim?
- A: Mr. Perry said that he had a good deal of information, that investigations had been done, that there was some forensic type report that would be helpful to me. I didn't know congressman Perry. I had never heard of him before this conversation. I said "Sir, if you've got something that you think is relevant to what the DoJ's mission is, you should feel free to send it to me." And he did. I was en route from New York to Washington and I got it. I looked at it on my iPhone. Obviously, I couldn't read the whole thing in transit like that, but I looked at it to get a feel for what it was and then I forwarded it to the US attorney for the western district of Pennsylvania.
- Q: Did they get back to you? What did they conclude?
- A: Scott Brady looked at it. He was the western district of Pennsylvania US attorney. It took him a couple days, but he got back in relatively short order with a pretty clear explanation for why there was no foundation for concern. The secretary of state had not certified more votes than were actually cast. The difference between the 5.25 that was actually certified by the secretary of state and the 5 million that was on a public-facing web site was that the information on the web site was incomplete because four counties had not uploaded their data.
- Q: No credibility to that?
- A: There was zero to that.
- Q: During that call, did Scott Perry mention Mr. Clark, and what did he say about him if so?
- A: He did. He mentioned Mr. Clark. He said something to the fact of "I think Jeff Clark is great," and that he's the kind of guy who can get in there and do something about this stuff. And this was coming on the heels of the president having mentioned Mr. Clark in the afternoon call earlier that day.
Rep. Kinzinger yields to Rep. Cheney.