Former U.S. Attorney Says Trump Wanted to Fire Him For Not Backing Election Fraud Claims

While Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark argued at the meeting about which man should lead the Justice Department and whether the department should intervene in Georgia, Mr. Trump interjected with complaints about the department’s official conclusion that the state election results were valid, according to three people briefed on the meeting. Mr. Trump ultimately decided not to elevate Mr. Clark, and the department did not send Georgia officials a letter seeking to undermine Mr. Biden’s win.

Immediately after the Sunday evening meeting in the Oval Office, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, Richard P. Donoghue, sent an email to Mr. Pak at 10:09 p.m. that said, “Please call ASAP,” according to documents that the House Oversight and Reform Committee obtained from the Justice Department and released in June.

During that phone call, Mr. Donoghue relayed that Mr. Trump remained fixated on the false notion that he had won Georgia, and said the president was angry that Mr. Pak did not support that conclusion, according to a person familiar with the call.

Early the next morning, Mr. Pak sent Mr. Donoghue resignation letters addressed to Mr. Trump and Mr. Rosen, effectively immediately.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday that Mr. Pak had “answered all questions in a seemingly honest and candid way, and my impression is that he believes in the rule of law and that he stood up for it.”

Mr. Blumenthal and Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, were among a handful of committee members who listened to all of Mr. Pak’s testimony.

While the panel’s investigation is ongoing, it has completed its first set of interviews. They included Mr. Pak, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Rosen, who spoke with the committee for nearly seven hours and with the Justice Department’s inspector general for about two hours.

Mr. Clark has not said whether he will come in for an interview, and the committee has not indicated who else it wants to speak with. The Justice Department has said that it will not invoke executive privilege if former officials are asked to testify before congressional investigators.