DONALD TRUMP FAILED IN MAKING CLARK INTO THE ACTING ATTORGEY GENARAL

 

            …Jeffrey Clark, will probably be called to testify to the Jan. 6^th Committee

 

Clarks colleagues had threatened to quit if Clark was made acting A.G.

 

The Jan. 6 committee hearing will feature testimony from Jeffrey Rosen, former acting Deputy Attorney General, also Richard Donoghue and Steven Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel; all were appointed by Trump. All three are expected to testify about Trump's efforts to make Jeffrey Clark the acting attorney general and their threats to quit if he did.

Clark had taken a pretty standard path for a conservative lawyer: Harvard University, Georgetown Law, clerk for Ronald Reagan-appointed federal appeals Judge, Danny Julian Boggs, and a partnership at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, with a stint in the Justice Department's environmental division during George W. Bush’s administration. His unusually long Justice Department biography even included, for some reason, details about his elementary school.

After the 2020 election, according to his fellow Republican-appointed colleagues at the Justice Department, Clark began to elicit concerns from his colleagues.

"What's going on with Jeff Clark?" Trump-appointed acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen recalled in an interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee. He added that Clark brought up "internet theories" about voting machines' being hacked via smart thermostats. "This is inconsistent with how I perceived him in the past."

Rosen started realizing something was "off-kilter," that "something odd was going on with Jeff Clark," when it was learned that he had, in violation of a Justice Department rule banning contact between Justice Department officials and the White House, except through proper channels, when Clark met with Trump.

"It's even more evident in hindsight, but at the time, I did think, 'He's meeting with the president and now he wants to be briefed by the DNI on thermostats?' Just what is going on here with Jeff Clark?" Rosen recalled.( "DNI" refers to the: director of national intelligence.)

Clark's attorney didn't respond to a request for comment ahead of the hearing.  But it is becoming a big deal that Trump wanted Clark to tell some key states that they could not certify the 2020 election.

The Jan. 6^th committee will be subpoenaing Mr. Clark.

Copyright G. Ater 2022