That same day, President Trump attempted to coerce Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into manufacturing enough votes to steal the election in that State. That call is discussed in Chapter 2 of this report. But one part of it deserves mention here. During that same call, President Trump brought up BJay Pak, whom President Trump had appointed as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. President Trump referred to Pak as "your never-Trumper U.S. attorney there."[273] The implication was that Pak was not doing enough to validate President Trump's fictitious claims of voter fraud. President Trump's mention of Pak proved to be ominous.
4.14 JANUARY 3, 2021: CLARK INFORMS DOJ LEADERSHIP THAT HE WILL ACCEPT PRESIDENT TRUMP’S OFFER
On January 3rd, Clark informed Rosen that he had decided to accept the President's offer to serve as the Acting Attorney General. Clark offered Rosen the position of his deputy.[274] Rosen thought that Clark's offer was "preposterous" and "nonsensical."[275] Rosen told the Select Committee that "there was no universe where I was going to do that to stay on and support someone else doing things that were not consistent with what I thought should be done."[276] Donoghue believed it was a done deal, and Clark would become the head of DOJ. But Pat Cipollone told Rosen that it was "not a done deal and that we should fight this out at the White House."[277]
White House call logs from January 3rd show that President Trump and Clark spoke four times that day starting at 6:59 a.m.[278] The first three calls of the day, two in the morning and one in the early afternoon, show that the President spoke with "Mr. Jeffrey Clark."[279] The final call between the two of them, from 4:19 to 4:22 p.m., however, shows that President Trump spoke to "Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Clark," suggesting that Clark had, in fact, accepted the President's offer.[280]
Acting Attorney General Rosen told the Select Committee that he would have felt comfortable being replaced by either Donoghue or Engel, but he did not "want for the Department of Justice to be put in a posture where it would be doing things that were not consistent with the truth, were not consistent with its own appropriate role, or were not consistent with the Constitution."[281]
As a result, Rosen took four immediate steps to try and prevent Clark's ascension to Attorney General. First, he called Meadows and asked him to set up a meeting for that evening with President Trump.[282] Second, he
