DC panel finds Trump's wannabe election-rigger Jeffery Clark acted unethically - sets up disbarment
Another Trump lawyer has discovered that working for Trump is a career killer. On Thursday, a three-member DC disciplinary committee ruled that Clark’s campaign to pressure Justice Department leaders to keep Trump in power illegally violated his duties as an attorney.
Their decision propels Clark down a greasy slope that could lead the DC bar to suspend or permanently revoke his law license. Disciplinary investigators who brought the charges against Clark say they will advocate for his disbarment. And another one bites the dust.
‘Bye Jeff. Do not let the door hit you on the way out.
When Trump tried to thwart the will of the American voter and stab democracy in the heart, he had help. Now, those shameless sycophants are suffering the consequences — including Clark. Who was second to none in advocating Trump stay in office — feck the rules. How did he get here?
In 2017, Trump appointed Clark as the Assistant Attorney General responsible for the environment. Few people could have picked him out of a lineup. Clark did not stay in that Department of Justice backwater. In September 2020, he was promoted to acting head of the Department's Civil Division.
The DOJ represents the American people. Clark had a different idea. He attempted to include the government in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against Trump. And he tried to get the Justice Department to sue Stephanie Winston Wolkoff for violating a nondisclosure agreement with the government. Wolkoff, a one-time aide to Melania Trump, had had the effrontery to write a tell-all book about the First Lady.
Clark failed. Luckily for democracy, failure became a habit for him. He turned from trying to intimidate people on Trump’s enemy list to a full-blown attempt to piss on the Constitution. In December 2020, he urged acting AG Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, and other DoJ officials to announce they were investigating serious election fraud issues. They rejected the suggestion — as the previous Trump AG Bill Barr had done — on the unassailable grounds that there were no serious election fraud issues.
There was no quit in the proto-fascist. Clark's next trick was a letter addressed to officials in Georgia, saying that the DOJ had evidence that raised "significant concerns" about the election results in multiple states. The lazy bastard did not even write the damn thing. The author was Ken Klukowski, a senior counsel to Clark, who moonlighted as a legal analyst for Breitbart News.
The letter suggested the Georgia legislature should "call itself into special session for the limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors". Both Rosen and Donoghue told Clark to stop fooling around. And the letter remained unsigned and unsent.
Clark persisted. In January 2021, he accused the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, of withholding evidence that foreign powers had interfered with voting machines. Clark was becoming increasingly nuts. In one instance, he said, "a Dominion machine accessed the Internet through a smart thermostat with a net connection trail leading back to China."
Trump was so impressed by Clark’s enthusiastic embrace of conspiracy fantasies he wanted to make him the acting AG — replacing Rosen. However, Trump backed down when the DOJ’s senior management threatened to quit en masse. Instead, it was Clarke who quit.
This resignation did not stop the DOJ’s Inspector General, Michael E. Horowitz, from investigating whether any former or current DOJ official engaged in an improper attempt to have the DOJ seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election.
Clark soon found he had a lot more on his plate. In October 2021, some big names in the legal field wrote a letter to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel at the DC Court of Appeals. They complained that Clark had been advancing his own agenda at the expense of his client — the American people. And in doing so had been a big fat liar. They put it thus:
We take this action because we believe, from publicly available information, that Mr. Clark violated the Rules of Professional Conduct when he sought to have the Department of Justice set in motion a process that would have nullified the 2020 Presidential election results in multiple states. Mr. Clark's actions were based on falsehoods with no factual support and were designed to advance his own personal and political interests at the expense of his client, the government of the United States.
Congress took an interest in Clark’s malfeasance.
On October 7, 2021, the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report. In it, they reveal how Clark became Trump’s Big Lie Lawyer, pressuring his colleagues in DOJ to force an overturn of the 2020 election."
On October 13, 2021, the House Jan 6 Committee subpoenaed Clark for testimony and documents. He said he would plead the fifth. On December 1, 2021, they voted to recommend criminal charges of contempt of Congress against him. On February 2, 2022, Clark finally showed up. And true to his word, he pleaded the fifth over 100 times.
On June 22, 2022, the FBI searched Clark's home and took his electronic devices.
On the same day, the D.C. Bar Office of Disciplinary Counsel filed ethics charges against Clark for interfering in the administration of justice during his efforts to keep Trump in power — despite being told repeatedly by Risen and Donoghue that there was no evidence to support Clark's allegations of election fraud. They also charged him with lying in the unsent Georgia letter.
To ice his dismal cake, the political community determined Clark was unindicted "Co-conspirator 4," in Jack Smith’s election interference suit against Trump.
People who knew Clark back in the day called him a prissy, detail-oriented fussbudget — the caricature of a legal nerd. He was a conservative. But he gave no signs, before his descent into madness, that he was a swivel-eyed crusader and incipient insurrectionist. He reminds me of Michael Palin’s chartered accountant in Monty Python, who dreams of being a lion tamer — a role beyond the milksop’s capability.
But let us give the man credit. He may have failed, but he tried. Now, Clark will pay the price for his fever dream. I imagine Clark — like most of the others who plighted their troth to the inconstant and faithless Trump — is praying for his Godhead's political resurrection and a concomitant improvement in his prospects.
Will Clark be rewarded for sacrificing his career and reputation? I do not know. But a cultist can dream.