Georgetown Lawyer
Jeffrey Clark is an accomplished scholar and lawyer. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree at Harvard (class of ’89), then a Masters in Urban Affairs at the University of Delaware. Clark then went to law school at Georgetown, the class of ’95. After graduating, he clerked for a Federal District Judge in Cincinnati.
Clark went to work at the firm of Kirkland and Ellis in Washington, DC. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Kirkland and Ellis is the “supplier” of lawyers for Republican governments. Here’s just some of their alumni in government service: Alex Acosta*, Alex Azar*, William Barr*, John Bolton*, Robert Bork , Pat Cipollone* Jeffrey Clark*, John Eastman*, Brett Kavanaugh*, Pat Philbin*, Jeff Rosen*, Ken Starr (* served in the Trump Administration). And there are a few Democrats too: Richard Cordray, Sean Patrick Maloney, and Mikie Sherrill. (The last two both current Democratic US Congressmen).
At Kirkland he developed an expertise in environmental law. He then moved into the Bush Department of Justice, and served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Environment and Natural Resources. After 2005, the “revolving door” turned again, and he returned to Kirkland to continue his environmental law practice. No surprise: he wasn’t a “green” guy. He represented the US Chamber of Commerce challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon emissions and British Petroleum in the Horizon oil spill case.
With Trump’s win in 2016, Clark moved back to Justice. This time he was the Assistant Attorney General for the same division. Once in charge, he aggressively worked to protect businesses from environmental law enforcement. He was “Mr. Oil Spill”.
Off the Rails
Political appointees at Justice often try to impose their views of the law on their departments. This is what happens, even in the law, when political control changes from one President to another. While the Obama Justice Department strictly enforced environmental laws against polluters, the Trump Administration took a different view. To make sure that view was reflected, guys like Clark were brought in.
I didn’t support the Trump pollution policies, but I understood that it was just one result of his election victory. The line, “elections have consequences” fits; these are the kind of unseen outcomes of a change in Party. The appointment of sympathetic Supreme Court Justices is a much more visible result of the same thing.
Donald Trump had difficulty getting his appointees through Senate confirmation, even though Republicans had a majority. So many of his appointments to office were “acting”; without Senate approval, who had a limited amount of time they could serve. I wrote an essay about this back in 2019, The Acting Presidency. In the last few months of the Trump Administration, Clark was appointed as Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. In that job, Clark successfully got the government to support Trump in a personal lawsuit. (It was filed by a woman who claimed Trump, well before he was President, sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of Bergdorf-Goodman, an exclusive clothing store in New York City).
Acting-Acting
Clark was replacing another acting appointee whose time had expired. After the election of 2020, Clark became steeped in the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy, thoroughly convinced that Trump had actually won the election, regardless of the lack of actual evidence of any kind of voter fraud. He approached a friend, Republican Congressman William Perry, who put him in touch with the outgoing President.
Trump and his campaign legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, were searching for support anywhere they could find it. That an Assistant Attorney General not only was “on board”, but willing to do anything to help, was a great plus. The current Attorney General, William Barr, made it clear that the Department found no evidence of voter fraud. And, once Barr resigned, his replacement as Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, and the Acting Deputy, Richard Donaghue, continued to follow those facts.
So in late December as the January 6th Congressional Electoral Vote certification loomed near, President Trump contemplated firing Rosen and Donaghue, and replacing them with Clark. In fact, Trump decided to actually do that, and for a few hours, Clark was “noted” as the Acting Attorney General in White House communications. But in a pivotal meeting with Justice Department leaders and White House legal counsel, Trump was told that the majority of the senior leadership of the Department would resign if Clark was placed in charge. As Rosen put it, “Clark would be leading a graveyard”. Trump rescinded the order.
The Other Side of Justice
What other actions and involvement did Jeffrey Clark have with the “Stop the Steal” movement? Did he have knowledge of plans for the Insurrection on January 6th? Those and more are questions the January 6th Committee wanted to ask Clark. He at first refused and was charged with contempt. Clark then ultimately appeared before the Committee. In that testimony, he exercised his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination over one hundred times.
The actions of several Trump attorneys not only gained the interest of the January 6th Committee, but also the current Department of Justice investigation of the Insurrection. One Trump campaign attorney, John Eastman, was pulled over in his car, and served a search warrant for his cell phone. When the FBI agents asked Eastman to raise his hands, the legal “scholar” didn’t quite seem to understand the question. The helpful agent gently took Eastman’s arms and put them on top of his head. Then they did a cursory search to get the phone, and check for any weapons.
Subject of Interest
And, in the early morning hours, the FBI came calling on Jeffrey Clark as well. He answered the door in his shirt and boxer shorts, to find agents on his front step. They had warrants to search for electronic devices; computers, phones and the like. The FBI doesn’t search a house with the occupant inside, they make sure to control the situation by placing them in temporary custody outside by the FBI vehicles.
And of course, once you answer the door, they aren’t going to let you go back inside. You might destroy evidence. So Jeffrey Clark, former Acting Assistant Attorney General, former Assistant Attorney General, former member of the vaunted Kirkland and Ellis law firm; was escorted to the street in his shirt and boxers.
I used to watch a television show called “Cops”. The show had camera crews that travelled with active police officers, showing what happened during their patrol. There was a “rule of thumb” while watching cops: if a suspect didn’t have a shirt on, they were going to jail.
The moral of this story might be to believe the evidence that the Justice Department, Clark’s own Department, found. It might be: don’t fall for the internet of lies and videos that made up Stop the Steal. Or it might be to not get involved in a plot to overthrow the Constitution.
But it definitely is this: if the FBI is knocking on your door – put your pants on.
