It happened again.

David Corn on the Jan. 6 hearings. [Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, It happened [again](. Last Thursday, which seems a lot longer ago than it was, I was sitting in the Cannon Caucus Room during another January 6 investigation hearing, and I got angry. And because tomorrow is a big fundraising deadline for Mother Jones and the end of our fiscal year, I wanted to write to you about it and ask, if you can, to [part with a couple of your hard-earned bucks and make a donation]( to help us close a $170,000 funding gap. My report on that January 6 hearing first appeared in my personal newsletter, Our Land, last weekend, and our fundraising team thought it makes the case for why you should [support Mother Jones](. I hope they're right because we need to raise a lot of money in these next two days. If you're not receiving Our Land and you like this type of writing from me, please consider [signing up]( for a trial subscription today. Back to the Cannon Caucus room and what got me riled up. This time, the focus of the day was not the violent attack on the Capitol but Donald Trump's post-election assault on the Justice Department. In late December 2020 and early January 2021, after the calculating and conniving Bill Barr had resigned as attorney general in disgust with Trump's refusal to accept his defeat, Trump spent weeks pressuring the department to nullify the election results. He was unrelenting, continuously badgering acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue to declare there had been widespread fraud and the tallies could not be trusted. Rosen and Donoghue repeatedly told Trump that the department had investigated various allegations and had found no evidence of any serious problems with the voting or the vote-counting. Trump refused to listen. Instead, he attempted to replace Rosen with a Trump toady in the DOJ named Jeffrey Clark, an environmental (or anti-environmental) attorney who had been pushing Rosen and Donoghue to send a letter to state officials noting the election was tainted with fraud and state legislatures should designate new slates of (pro-Trump) electors. Rosen and Donoghue resisted this effort to subvert the DOJ, believing it was deceitful and would be a disaster for the department and the nation. What might happen—what constitutional chaos, what violence—if the Justice Department pronounced an election rigged? Trump tried to muscle them into going along, and when he took steps to dump Rosen and install Clark (who was eager to proceed with this bogus scheme), Trump was only thwarted because most of the senior leadership of the department threatened to resign. In a dramatic showdown in the Oval Office on January 3, 2021, with Rosen, Clark, Donoghue, and White House lawyers present, Trump was told that such a move would prompt hundreds of resignations, and Clark would be "left leading a graveyard." Thus ended Trump's plan to corrupt the Justice Department to steal the election. There's a lot more to this bonkers story, and you can read my report on the hearing [here](. The testimony from Rosen and Donoghue—and a detailed [report]( on this episode issued last year by the Senate Judiciary Committee—makes clear this was a damn close call. One might be tempted to say, "Hooray, the system worked!" Trump failed to turn the DOJ into a subsidiary of his reality-distorting and demagogic political operation. No such letter was sent to the states. And his idea to have nutbag attorney Sidney Powell, a chief purveyor of baseless conspiracy theories, named a special counsel was squashed, as was his request for the Justice Department to file a lawsuit challenging the election results. When White House chief of staff Mark Meadows asked Rosen and Donoghue to investigate the deranged, it's-on-the-internet conspiracy theory that hackers supposedly associated with the CIA and MI6 had used an Italian satellite to change Trump votes to Biden votes, they ignored this insanity. (Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, however, did instruct the Pentagon's attaché in Rome to look into this.) So, good news for the nation, the Trump crazy was blocked at the DOJ. Yet...this hardly seems cause for celebration. And here's why this episode hopefully makes for a compelling case [to support Mother Jones' kickass journalism](: How many newsrooms were calling Trump's underhanded maneuvers an attempted coup in real time? Or warning before the election that Trump intended to subvert American democracy to retain power. My fellow editors and reporters at Mother Jones and I were [sounding the alarm]( throughout Trump's corrupt administration, while many others treated the [spectacle(s)]( as political theater. It is only because we answer to readers like you that we at Mother Jones can provide the kickass, independent journalism that covers the full truth without fear, favor, or false equivalence. To do that, we need your assistance. [Please pitch in and help us if you can today](. Look at how Trump nearly toppled an elected government. While he was trying to abuse his power—and [perhaps breaking the law]( by pushing the department to engage in a fraudulent action—the public was kept in the dark. He was allowed to keep bellowing about a stolen election—and to mislead tens of millions of Americans—with no push-back from senior government officials who knew he was disseminating disinformation (or from members of his own party who also knew). True, on December 1, 2020, Barr, while still AG, said publicly there were no signs of widespread electoral fraud. But then he took a powder. White House lawyers Pat Cipollone and Eric Herschmann, who, according to the hearings, sided with Rosen and Donoghue and recognized that Trump was lying to the nation, did not speak out at the time. (Cipollone has so far declined to cooperate with the January 6 committee; Herschmann gave a deposition.) It can be argued that all these reality-connected Trump officials were busy during these harrowing weeks preventing Trump from pulling off the coup he was pursuing. One can see why Rosen had reason to stay put and not provide Trump the opportunity to name Clark as the acting attorney general. But imagine a scenario in which Trump officials and advisers —say, Cipollone—resigned their positions and openly challenged Trump's lies about the election. At the least, Rosen could have held multiple press conferences noting the Justice Department had looked for and found no evidence of election fraud. Obviously, it was not easy for Rosen or Donoghue to take a stand against their president—and [ditto]( for Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling in Georgia and Rusty Bowers in Arizona. But with the republic possibly at stake, those Trump officials in Washington who knew Trump was dangerously conning the public ought to have done everything possible to counter his war on American democracy. (When our so-called leaders don't do everything in their power to stop the subversion of American democracy, it only makes our work to get the truth out—and [your support](—all that more important.) You might say, calm down, it worked out. All's well that ends well. Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Steve Bannon, and the whole sick crew failed. Yes, but had Rosen not held firm, or had Trump disregarded the threat of mass resignations and shit-canned him, who knows? The political system of the United States should not depend on the fortitude of one guy who none of us had heard of before all this. Moreover, even though the republic did not collapse, Trump managed to pollute the nation's political discourse by convincing millions to believe the lie that the election had been rigged to rob him of his victory. Trump delegitimized the results and the presidency of Joe Biden for many Americans, and that is not without consequences. In the first draft of my report on the hearing, I wrote, "Once again, a thin line of Republican officials had blocked Trump from an unprecedented abuse of power." My editor suggested we place the word "honorable" in front of "Republican." No, I thought. As gutsy as Rosen and Donoghue might seem, they were just doing their jobs. Do you get special credit for not joining a coup? I suggested instead we call them "sticking-to-the-rules" Republicans. Which is what they were and they deserve our appreciation for that. We can be grateful to these Republicans (who had been happily serving in the administration of a lying, racist, divisive, hate-fueling president) for not going along with the Trump putsch. But I'm not sure they deserve a parade. After all, they did enable a thuggish autocrat-wannabe in ways large and small before they finally said no to him. But my anger was not directed at Rosen et. al. I was mad that once again Trump got away with it. Not that he succeeded in forcing the Justice Department to defy the popular will so he could retain power, but that there were no consequences for him trying to do so. This is partly because no one blew the whistle in real time. And until recently, Clark went unpunished, too. Last week, [federal agents showed up]( at his home before dawn with a search warrant, put Clark outside in his pajamas, searched the premises, and seized his electronic devices. Finally, it seems, Merrick Garland's Justice Department is zeroing in on Trump's efforts to overturn the elections. It also [dropped subpoenas]( on several Republicans who were involved in state-level efforts to thwart the certification of Biden's victory. And FBI agents seized the phone of far-right attorney John Eastman, who cooked up Trump's Constitution-defying scheme to block the election. [I've been critical]( of Garland for not telling the public whether the DOJ has been investigating Trump's attempt to overthrow the US government. The American people deserve to know if its Justice Department is examining such a dangerous effort whether or not criminal indictments are filed—in the same way a special counsel issues a report describing his or her findings and prosecution decisions. But that's another column. In the meantime, my anger is eased a bit by the news of the Clark raid. But will this only replicate a scenario we've seen before? A Trump underling is nabbed, and Trump skates. Remember Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer. He went to prison for making an illegal $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to cover up her alleged tryst with Trump. He committed this crime, as federal prosecutors noted, at Trump's instruction. What happened to Cohen's criminal co-conspirator? Nada. Clark was Trump's tool. If he's nailed and Trump goes free—and remains the titular head of the GOP and its leading 2024 contender—we will have cause for anger and further reason to worry about what Trump might do to the Justice Department (and the nation) should he return to the Oval Office. So if you made it to this point, let me ask you what for me is an important question: Do you think that the no-nonsense, unwavering reporting and big-picture analysis that Mother Jones and I provide is desperately needed right now? You know how I would answer that. And let me tell you that my colleagues and I would be incredibly grateful if [you can help us produce the type of journalism that this moment of crisis requires and demands](. We're working our tails off every day to cover the mounting threats to democracy that I know worry and concern you. To do that, [we need money](. It's a hard truth. And it's simple: the more money we can raise, the more hell-raising reporters I can put on the beat. So while I'd rather be digging up stories than asking for money, I know we can only do this indispensable work with your help and your contributions. That's why I've taken the time to write you with this direct request: [Please make a donation today so we can close that $170,000 gap](. Thanks for reading. Even if you can't pitch in today, please know that I'm glad you're with us and find our work valuable. And if you like the work I do, please do [sign up]( for my Our Land newsletter. Onward, [David Corn] David Corn Washington DC, Bureau Chief Mother Jones [Donate]( P.S. If you recently made a donation, thank you! And please accept our apologies for sending you this reminder—our systems take a little while to catch up. [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com]( PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755