Trump ally faces disbarment over 2020 election lies

A former Justice Department official — and longtime ally of President Donald Trump — should lose his license to practice law after he worked to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, a Washington-based disciplinary panel decided. Jeffrey Clark, who was a senior DOJ attorney during the president’s first term, has vowed to fight the ruling that determined his conduct violated professional ethics.

The board’s conclusions

Clark was “prepared to cause the Justice Department to tell a lie about the status of its investigation” into the 2020 presidential election — which was won by Democrat Joe Biden — the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility said in its report. “Lawyers cannot advocate for any outcome based on false statements and they certainly cannot urge others to do so,” the board explained. But former DOJ official Clark — who now, in Trump’s second term, leads the White House Office of Management and Budget division that vets proposed executive branch rules — “persistently and energetically sought to do just that on an important national issue,” the report stated. “He should be disbarred as a consequence and to send a message to the rest of the Bar and to the public that this behavior will not be tolerated.”

Defending his actions

Clark took to social media to brand the ruling “disappointing news from a 100% politicized D.C. Bar process.” He insisted he knows he “did the right thing in 2020 and 2021 during the first President Trump Administration and wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror if I had not proceeded to internally raise the election questions I did.” Clark also shared a Bible verse as he asked supporters for prayers for his “vindication” and vowed to “challenge the nonsense lawfare the progressive movement has cooked up to bedevil lawyers with conservative backbones.”

What got him here

The disciplinary panel’s ruling is based on Clark’s attempt to pressure Department of Justice officials into issuing a false statement claiming there was substantial evidence of election fraud. A Senate Judiciary report detailed his alleged actions, claiming Clark in December 2020 tried to get his superiors to send a letter to Georgia lawmakers saying they’d “identified significant concerns” about the election in the state. When officials refused, Clark met with Trump himself and discussed the possibility of replacing then-Acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. That led to a White House meeting in early January 2021 that left multiple senior Justice Department and White House officials threatening to resign if Trump made good on a plan to make Clark the acting AG.

Clark’s defenders speak out

Clark’s attorney in the disciplinary case, Harry MacDougald, has defended his client, insisting, “They want to disbar Jeff Clark for the heresy of privately recommending further investigations of the 2020 election.” MacDougald believes Clark was unfairly targeted for giving legal advice, calling the situation “a pure thought crime and a travesty of justice.” Rachel Cauley, the White House OMB communications director, also backed Clark, branding the board’s ruling “another chapter in the Deep State’s ongoing assault on President Trump and those who stood beside him in defense of the truth.” According to Cauley, “Jeff Clark has been harassed, raided, doxed and blacklisted simply for questioning a rigged election and serving President Trump.” The disciplinary board’s disbarment recommendation next heads to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which will make the final decision.

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