Elie Honig is a CNN senior legal analyst and former federal and state prosecutor, and author of "Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Justice Department." The views expressed here are his own. View more opinion on CNN. Watch Honig answer readers' questions on "CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta" on weekends.
(CNN)We were a single Donald Trump whim away from an actual coup last January, one backed by the weight of the United States Department of Justice. We were thatclose.
In a scene that participants have described as resembling the reality show "The Apprentice," then-President Trump spent hours at the White House on January 3 considering competing pitches from two top Justice Department officials about which of them should get the top spot as acting attorney general.
Jeffrey Clark, then the attorney general for the civil division -- who reportedly had secretly expressed his support for the bogus "stolen election" theory directly to Trump himself -- made this straightforward proposition, in essence: Choose me and I'll deploy the Department to help you steal this election. Jeffrey Rosen, then the incumbent acting attorney general, made this counter-proposal to Trump: Replace me with Clark and I'll quit, along with several other DOJ leaders, and you'll have a mass resignation on your hands.
Ultimately, after hours of deliberation, Trump stuck with Rosen. But if Trump had chosen Clark, it's not difficult to see what likely would have followed.
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