meddling in the outcome of a presidential election," Donoghue admonished Clark, to which Clark indignantly responded, "I think a lot of people have meddled in this election."[216]
Under questioning by Rosen and Donoghue, Clark eventually also revealed that he had been in a meeting in the Oval Office with President Trump. Donoghue demanded to know, "Why the hell are we hearing your name from the President of the United States and a Congressman?"[217] When Clark was reminded that meeting the President without authorization or informing his superiors was a clear violation of the White House contacts policy, he retorted, "It's a policy, there's a lot more at stake here than a policy."[218] In fact, the contacts policy was designed for situations just like this where political figures might try to influence criminal investigations or legal actions taken by the Department of Justice, as President Trump attempting to do.[219]
In the days that followed, Clark called witnesses, got a briefing from ODNI and pursued his own investigations. Acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue was "shocked" to learn that Clark did not cease his efforts even after learning there was "no foreign interference."[220] Instead of adhering to the facts, Clark "doubled down." During a follow-up meeting on January 2nd, Clark acknowledged he had received the ODNI briefing, and he acknowledged that there was nothing in the briefing that would have supported his earlier suspicion about foreign involvement, but he nevertheless "spewed out some of these theories, some of which we'd heard from the President, but others which were floating around the internet and media, and just kept insisting that the Department needed to act and needed to send those letters."[221]
4.10 DECEMBER 29TH MEETING
The next day, Rosen, Donoghue, and Engel had a meeting with Mark Meadows, Pat Cipollone, and Cipollone's deputy, Pat Philbin, in the White House Chief of Staff's office.[222] While the meeting dealt primarily with the Presidential transition, the group discussed a draft civil complaint modeled after Texas v. Pennsylvania that the President wanted the Department of Justice to file challenging the results of the Presidential election, tentatively called United States v. Pennsylvania.[223] The DOJ officials said that they had not had time to thoroughly review the proposed suit, but initially indicated that it appeared to be flawed and did not seem "viable" for DOJ to file.[224] Meadows suggested that the DOJ leadership meet with William Olson and Kurt Olsen,
