Jan. 6 Testimony Reveals Colleagues Basically Think DOJ Coup Lawyer Jeff Clark's An Incompetent Idiot

Never get high on your own supply.

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The contours of former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark’s attempted coup at the Justice Department have been clear since Biden took office. The New York Times first broke the news on January 22, 2021, and Clark’s effort to get himself made Attorney General so he could deploy the DOJ to investigate debunked allegations of voter fraud in the swing states was documented in a 394-page report by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Nevertheless, testimony by his former colleagues on what a dipshit they all thought he was is good fun, and it we do appreciate the January 6 Select Committee Friday night news dumping it on us at 10pm. (Well, mostly.)

“You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill,” Richard Donoghue, chief deputy to acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen snorted during a contentious Oval Office meeting where Clark made his case to the then president.

After getting brain-poisoned by DO UR OWN RESEARCH-ing election fraud on the internet, Clark, who was then head of the Civil division, had already freaked out his colleagues by requesting an intelligence briefing on Chinese election hacking via Bluetooth enabled thermostats — which never gets any less weird, no matter how many times we type it. He then produced a “proof of concept” letter to send to legislators in Georgia, claiming that the Department was investigating non-existent claims of election fraud, and thus electors should feel free to recast the state’s electoral votes for Trump.

Donoghue and Rosen told him he was way out of line, but Clark persisted, with the encouragement of Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry, who was huddling up with the White House during much of December strategizing to get the election overturned.

Things came to a head at the January 3, 2020 meeting, where every government lawyer in Trumpland met to tell the president in no uncertain terms that putting Clark in charge of the DOJ was a really bad idea.

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“When I entered the Oval Office, the President was behind the desk, and it was [White House Counsel]Pat Cipollone, [his deputy] Pat Philbin, a White House lawyer named Eric Herschmann, Jeff Clark, Jeff Rosen, [Office of Legal Counsel head] Steve Engel, and then me,” Donoghue testified.

“What do I have to lose? If I do this, what do I have to lose?” Trump demanded, after Clark presented his plan to use the DOJ to ratf*ck the election.

In fact, he had a lot to lose, and the loss would have been pretty much every lawyer in the White House and the entire leadership structure of the DOJ.

“Sir, I would resign immediately. There is no way I’m serving one minute under this guy,” Donoghue said.

“Steve, you wouldn’t resign, would you?” Trump demanded incredulously.

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“Absolutely I would, Mr. President. You’d leave me no choice,” Engel agreed.

Donoghue and Clark had already had a phone conference with the DOJ leadership and drafted their own resignation letters, promised that every division chief and many, many US attorneys would immediately and publicly announce their departure in protest if Clark were given the powers he asked for.

Mr. President, these aren’t bureaucratic leftovers from another administration. You picked them. This is your leadership team. You sent every one of them to the Senate; you got them confirmed. What is that going to say about you, when we all walk out at the same time? And I don’t even know what that’s going to do to the U.S. attorney community. You could have mass resignations amongst your U.S. attorneys. And then it will trickle down from there; you could have resignations across the Department. And what happens if, within 48 hours, we have hundreds of resignations from your Justice Department because of your actions? What does that say about your leadership?

So they all had a good old time for upwards of two hours saying that Jeff Clark was a moron who could barely find the men’s room, much less FBI Director Chris Wray’s office, and had never tried a criminal case in his life.

Even loyal Pat Cipollone, who spent two years telling congress to get bent and insisting that the executive was possessed of awesome and mighty powers, said that he’d quit if Clark was made AG.

“That letter that this guy wants to send, that letter is a murder-suicide pact,” he said, according to Donoghue’s testimony. “It’s going to  damage everyone who touches it. And we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don’t ever want to see that letter again.”

At some point, Trump realized the plot was never going to work. So he yelled at Rosen and Donoghue some more and called them useless, then adjourned the meeting.

At that point, the President looked at me and said, “So now what happens with him?”, gesturing toward Jeff Clark.

I didn’t understand the question. I said, “Sir?”

And he said, “Are you going to fire him?”

I said, “No, I’m not going to fire him. I don’t have the authority to fire him. He’s a Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General.” And the President said, “Well, I’m not going to fire him.” I said, “Well, that’s fine then, sir. We should all just go back to work.”

And we all got up and walked out of the Oval Office.

And so the Republic was saved. More or less.

Donoghue Testimony [via Court Listener]


Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.