Jeffrey Clark, an attorney who served at high levels of the Department of Justice under former President Donald Trump, including briefly as acting attorney general, has been indicted by Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis along with Trump in the racketeering case over the 2020 election challenges, and charged with dishonesty and attempting to interfere with the administration of justice by the District of Columbia Bar. The charges in both relate to a memo Clark drafted about 2020 election irregularities in Georgia addressed to Georgia officials that was never sent. His bar disciplinary trial is scheduled for January, but he has attempted to postpone it until after the criminal proceedings are finished.
On Thursday, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility held a hearing to consider his deferral request. The court is expected to issue a ruling shortly.
The draft letter Clark (pictured above) is being investigated for, known as the “Proof of Concept” letter, was written on December 28, 2020, and addressed to the Georgia Governor, Speaker of the House, and President Pro Tempore of the Senate. According to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel’s (ODC) charges against Clark, “It recommended that the Governor call the Georgia legislature into special session and argued that if the Governor refused to do so, the legislature had the authority to convene such a session on its own initiative.”
In the Disciplinary Counsel’s Response to Renewed Request for Deferral arguing against delaying the bar trial, the bar’s attorneys said, “The only issue in the disciplinary case is whether Respondent had any factual support at the operative time — essentially between December 28, 2020 and January 2, 2021 — to support his claim that the Department of Justice had identified significant concerns that might have affected the results of the election in Georgia.”
The brief accused Clark of already being guilty.
“[U]nfit lawyers, who use their law licenses to undermine the constitutional democracy to which they have sworn an oath, should not be permitted to indefinitely postpone their day of reckoning,” it said.
Clark’s Reply in Support of Renewed Request for Deferral Under Board Rule 4.2, which he filed immediately before the hearing, called the bar out.
“At every stage of this case, ODC has treated our arguments on Mr. Clark’s behalf with sneering contempt, pretending that it was already clear that ethics violations have been proven,” the reply stated. “It has even told courts several times that Mr. Clark did not contest the Charges against him, which is manifestly untrue and refuted by a simple review of the Answer filed last year.”
The reply added, “ODC simply assumes that the mainstream press narrative that the 2020 election was beyond question is true. This is prejudgment, not due process. As we will show if we proceed to trial, there is a large volume of information that shows the 2020 election was highly irregular, violative of various state statutory requirements, and — at the very least — warranted the investigations far more searching than were permitted by the senior-most leadership of the Department of Justice.”
Clark argued that if the Georgia prosecution is allowed to proceed first, it will result in the bar disciplinary case being dismissed.
“[I]f Mr. Clark is acquitted, this case should be dismissed, especially since it is premised on the first-ever attempt to discipline a lawyer for the thought crime of proposing a letter, insisting it be debated in front of an ultimate decisionmaker (here the President of the United States), with that letter not having been sent outside of the walls of the Oval Office or the Justice Department,” the brief stated.
The ODC is treating Hunter Biden differently.
Clark said in his brief that there was no “response from ODC as to why bar discipline in D.C. against Hunter Biden can follow his criminal case(s), but why bar discipline must precede Mr. Clark’s criminal case in Georgia.”
The brief pointed out the hypocrisy of the charges.
“He is in the dock on a trumped-up and incoherent disciplinary charge while D.C. Bar brought no charges against Democrat lawyers who expressed the view (in or out of office) that Donald Trump stole the 2016 presidential election from Hillary Clinton with the aid of Russia,” it asserted.
Clark’s Renewed Request for Deferral Under Board Rule 4.2, which was filed earlier this month and renewed his original request for deferral from August 2022, stated that “forcing Mr. Clark to defend his bar discipline case while simultaneously defending a historically unprecedented major criminal indictment would be a break with decades of practice, and, as explained below, would inevitably generate suspicion that differing treatment for Mr. Clark in these proceedings is explained by the fact that Mr. Clark’s political views are very different than those of most D.C. residents and lawyers.”
Clark observed in his renewed request, “A survey of published decisions clearly shows that sanctions for criminal conduct nearly always follow (not precede) a conviction in the related criminal case.”
He cited numerous bar disciplinary cases as precedent, including that involving attorney Kevin Clinesmith.
“[A]s a DOJ lawyer he had knowingly altered an email he knew would be a basis for a FISA warrant application in the FBI investigation into supposed connections between the Trump campaign and Russia,” the brief stated. “Despite clear evidence of criminal behavior, ODC took no action for eight months until after Mr. Clinesmith was charged in federal court on August 14, 2020 and pled guilty four days later to a felony.”
In a similar situation, the disbarment trial of Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman, California Bar Disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland refused to postpone the trial. However, the disciplinary trial had already begun when Eastman was indicted in Georgia.
The criminal case’s motions deadline is January 8, 2024, which means the criminal trial could start as soon as January. In the criminal case, Clark was charged with a Georgia RICO charge in Count 1 and the second Count 22, a Criminal Attempt to Commit False Statements and Writings.
Clark served as the assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice and the acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division. For a brief period on January 5, 2021, Trump named him attorney general. The pleadings in Clark’s case, along with those to disbar Rudy Giuliani, are located here, and his original answer here.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
