Colleagues shocked that ‘nerdy’ Justice Department official joined Trump’s election reversal effort



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Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and other senior Justice Department officials spent New Years Eve berating Jeffrey Clark, the DOJ’s acting head of the Civil Division, for repeatedly pushing them to help former President Donald Trump reverse his clear electoral loss and secretly meet with Trump, The New York Times reports, citing six people familiar with the meeting. Rosen thought the matter was settled that night, the Times reports, but Clark continued to secretly plan an intervention in Georgia with Trump, including a plot where Trump would fire Rosen and put Clark in his place.

Clark said that the report of Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post about his role in an effort to replace Rosen and meddle in Georgia to reverse Trump’s loss is inaccurate, and he claims his talks with Trump are protected by “legal privileges.” Only the intervention of Justice Department officials and Trump’s White House lawyer Pat Cipollone, along with the threat of massive resignations, kept Trump from sacking Rosen and raising Clark, all three newspapers report. .

Even before “Clark’s machinations came to light” in the New Year, it was clear from “his willingness to entertain conspiracy theories of voting booth hacks and voter fraud” that Clark “did was not the establishment lawyer they thought he was, “the Times reports. “Some senior department officials saw him as calm, hard-working and detail-oriented. Others said they didn’t know anything about him, his profile was so low. He didn’t hit or miss his fans in the department. nor its critics as part of the Trumpist faction of the party. “

Clark’s friends and critics, the Times reports, described him as “cheesy” and “thoughtful,” a Republican lawyer and Federalist Society member with the usual skeptical view of regulations, not an operator. Now Clark, 53, is “notorious” and is unlikely to be rehired at the Kirkland & Ellis law firm, where he has spent his career outside of the Trump and George W. Bush, the Times reports. Learn more about Clark – a Harvard alumnus, Georgetown Law, and the University of Delaware’s Biden School of Public Policy – at The New York Times.

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