Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and other top Justice Department officials lamented on New Year’s Eve that Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the DOJ’s civil division, had repeatedly pressured them to help former President Donald Trump clear his election loss to stop and meet in secret with Trump, The New York Times reports, referring to six people with knowledge of the meeting. Rosen thought the case was settled that night, the Times reported, but Clark secretly continued with Trump to intervene in Georgia, including a conspiracy where Trump would fire Rosen and put Clark in his place.
Clark said the reporting by the Times, The Wall Street Journal, en The Washington Post about his role in an attempt to replace Rosen and interfere in Georgia to undo Trump’s loss is inaccurate, and he claims that his discussions with Trump are protected under ‘legal privileges’. Only intervention by Justice Department officials and Trump’s White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, plus the threat of mass resignations, prevented Trump from firing Rosen and exalting Clark, all three newspapers reported.
Even before ‘Clark’s fraud’ came to light ‘in the new year, it was clear from’ his willingness to maintain conspiracy theories about hockey and election fraud ‘that Clark’ was not the establishment advocate they thought he was’, the Times reports. ‘Some senior leaders of the department saw him as quiet, hardworking and detailed. Others said they knew nothing about him, so low was his profile. faction of the party. ‘
Clark’s friends and critics, the Times reports, describes him as ‘nerd’ and ‘considerate’, a Republican advocate and member of the Federalist Society with the usual skeptical view of regulations, not an operator. Now Clark, 53, is ‘notorious’ and is unlikely to be re-appointed to the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, where he is pursuing his career outside his side in the Trump and George W. Bush administration, the Times reports. Read more about Clark – an alumnus of Harvard, Georgetown Law and the Biden School of Public Policy at the University of Delaware – at The New York Times.
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