WATCH: Two Minutes from the Jan. 6 Hearing That Show Trump Acted Criminally to Steal the 2020 Election

Former President Donald Trump directed his Justice Department to simply declare the 2020 general election “corrupt” and said he and Republicans in Congress would take care of the rest.

Reports of this have been out for some time, but former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue testified to the House Select Committee Thursday, under oath, that this happened, and he had contemporaneous notes as evidence.

Donoghue is not some member of “resistance Twitter” nor is he a Never Trumper. He was a senior member of the Trump DOJ, largely because he was loyal to the Trump administration and former Attorney General Bill Barr. And yet, here he was, under questioning by Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, admitting to the public under penalty of perjury, that the former president tried to pressure the Justice Department into declaring a fair election fraudulent so that he could remain in power.

As Amanda Carpenter said on Morning Joe Friday morning of the revelation from Donoghue: “That shows that Trump was leading these schemes, directing them from the Oval Office, and not only just pressuring Justice Department officials.”

The Select Committee hearings on January 6th have been … a lot. But I have been remarkably impressed with the pacing and delivery of the raft of evidence put forth regarding the final months of the Trump administration and the failed effort to overturn the election results.

But moments like the one featured above can get lost in the sauce, so to speak. And here we are the next day, bringing attention to what appears to be as close to a smoking gun for the crime of committing conspiracy to defraud the government as we’ve seen to date.

As law professor Jonathan Turley has argued regarding that particular charge: “For a strong federal case, the charge would have to be based on proof that Trump believed these legal and factual claims were meritless.”

We know that — among many others — Trump’s most senior official at the Department of Justice, Bill Barr, told him the claims of election fraud were “bullshit.” We now know that, after Barr left, Trump told Donoghue to simply claim that the election was corrupt, to rubber-stamp his baseless allegation regardless of the truth.

If that’s not clear evidence of criminal intent, then such a thing does not exist.

Watch above via Fox News.