Top DOJ official drafted resignation email amid Trump election pressure

In early January 2021, one top Justice Department official was so concerned that then-President Donald Trump might fire his acting attorney general that he drafted an email announcing he and a second top official would resign in response.

The official, Patrick Hovakimian, prepared the email announcing his own resignation and that of the department's second-in-command, Richard Donoghue, as Trump considered axing acting attorney general Jeff Rosen. At the time, Hovakimian was an associate deputy attorney general and a senior adviser to Rosen.

But Trump didn’t fire Rosen, and Hovakimian's draft email — a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO — remained unsent. The fact that Trump-era DOJ officials went that far highlights the serious pressures they faced in the waning days of the administration as the former president tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

“This evening, after Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen over the course of the last week repeatedly refused the President’s direct instructions to utilize the Department of Justice’s law enforcement powers for improper ends, the President removed Jeff from the Department,” Hovakimian wrote in his never-sent email. “PADAG Rich Donoghue and I resign from the Department, effective immediately.”

Hovakimian then wrote that preserving DOJ’s institutional integrity was Rosen’s top concern.

“The decision of whether and when to resign and whether the ends of justice are best served by resigning is a highly individual question, informed by personal and family circumstances,” he continued. “Jeff asked me to pass on to each of you that whatever your own decision, he knows you will adhere always to the highest standards of justice and act always – and only – in the interests of the United States.”

Hovakimian drafted the email on Jan. 3 from the Justice Department’s headquarters after Rosen and Donoghue departed for a meeting with then-President Trump at the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter.

His draft email has not previously been published. Raphael Prober, a partner at Akin Gump and lawyer for Hovakimian, declined to comment.

The officials’ threat to resign was first reported by the New York Times, which said the group of Justice Department officials had taken part in a conference call organized by Donoghue. The officials had agreed on the call to resign together if Trump sacked Rosen.

The Hovakimian letter’s disclosure comes as the House Oversight Committee steps up its investigation into the tumultuous final weeks of the Trump administration and Trump’s attempts to pressure the Department of Justice to intervene in the 2020 election. Hovakimian sat for a closed-door, transcribed interview before the committee’s staff on Tuesday morning, and a Department of Justice memo cleared the way for others to testify as well.

The House Oversight committee has obtained a copy of the draft email. A spokesperson for the panel did not immediately provide comment.

Trump, for his part, has signaled he will not immediately try to block the officials from testifying. On Monday, his lawyer Doug Collins sent a letter saying the former president would not immediately sue to try to block former DOJ officials’ participation in the multiple probes scrutinizing Trump’s last weeks in office.

But Collins, a former House GOP lawmaker, appeared to walk back the letter in a Tuesday interview with Fox News where he seemed to suggest former DOJ officials should refuse to answer some congressional inquiries.

Collins “railed against the DOJ waiver as ‘political’ and said he hopes the former officials will withhold any information from Congress that would fall under executive privilege,” wrote Fox News reporter Tyler Olson.

“The former president still believes those are privileged communications that are covered under executive privilege,” Collins said, according to the Fox News article.

It is unclear what exactly Trump wants from the former DOJ officials and why he refuses to take legal action to protect communications that he believes should be covered by executive privilege. Collins did not immediately respond to a request for comment from POLITICO.

And his team doesn’t have much time to get their messaging straight. Hovakimian answered questions from congressional investigators the morning after Collins’ letter went out. Two other former DOJ officials are also scheduled to sit for interviews with House Oversight in the next two weeks, according to two people familiar with the committee’s plans.

In a Thursday morning statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi lauded Maloney's investigation into Trump's efforts to interfere with the Justice Department, calling the oversight push "historic" and adding that it would "contribute greatly to the work" the select committee was doing to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), confirmed in a Thursday morning interview that Donoghue and Rosen were also set to sit for closed-door interviews with his panel.

"They are on the list of people we’re going to interview," he said. Attorneys for Donoghue and Rosen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this report misstated the year Patrick Hovakimian drafted the email.