Legal pressure on Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department lawyer who schemed with Donald Trump and others to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, is expected to rise with the cooperation of another ex-DoJ lawyer who worked with him, say former prosecutors.
The cooperation from the ex-lawyer, in tandem with other evidence obtained by prosecutors, could help spur charges against Clark – a close ally of then president Trump – and benefit prosecutors as they go after bigger targets.
Clark, then an assistant attorney general, played a key role at the DoJ towards the end of the Trump administration, which overlapped with plotting by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman and Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to persuade Georgia and other states to use “fake electors” for Trump, instead of ones that Joe Biden won.
In Trump’s desperate efforts to block Biden’s win, he turned to Clark for help at the suggestion of congressman Scott Perry, who had also touted him to Meadows, according to emails revealed by the House January 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot by Trump supporters.
Trump met Clark alone in mid-December, and for a few weeks talked about replacing the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, with Clark, until Trump was told bluntly at a raucous White House meeting by Rosen and his deputy, plus the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, that doing so would spur mass resignations at the department and in the counsel’s office.
Clark, whose cellphone and other electronic equipment was seized by federal agents in a June search on his home, worked with the former DoJ lawyer Ken Klukowski, who is now cooperating with prosecutors, on a draft letter to top Georgia state legislators and the governor which falsely claimed that department had “significant concerns” about election fraud there and in other states.
The letter, which was never sent despite Clark’s efforts, also suggested that legitimate Biden electors be replaced with ones for Trump.
Other potential evidence against Clark could surface in cellphones that the FBI seized over the summer that belonged to Eastman and Perry, both of whom have filed lawsuits to block investigators from accessing their phones.
Moreover, Cipollone, who witnessed and was appalled by Trump’s idea of installing Clark to replace Rosen, according to testimony by a top DoJ official to the January 6 panel, testified on 2 September to a grand jury in Washington looking at Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and the Capitol attack.
While the substance of Cipollone’s testimony is unknown, other evidence about his views of Clark and Trump’s flirtation with promoting Clark to lead the DoJ could add to legal pressure on Clark.
Former federal prosecutor Michael Zeldin said Klukowski’s cooperation with prosecutors may help make cases against other top Trump loyalists, as well as Clark.
“When pursuing conspiracy cases, prosecutors look for ‘weak links’ among the co-conspirators, to wit, people willing to cooperate. The closer to the hub of the conspiracy, the better,” Zeldin told the Guardian.
“In the case of the Georgia false electors scheme, the two people who jump out as logical witnesses are Ken Klukowski and Jeffrey Clark. Both appear to have been intimately involved in the scheme, and both have a great deal to lose if convicted of a crime.”
Zeldin said Klukowski’s cooperation with federal prosecutors could be “very bad news” for Clark, Giuliani and Eastman, who were involved in the “fake electors” schemes in several states, including Georgia.
Zeldin added: “Beyond these immediate probable targets, Klukowski may have insight into the role Mark Meadows is said to have played in orchestrating Trump’s efforts to set aside the Georgia election results.”
Similarly, Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan, told the Guardian that “Clark may find himself in serious legal jeopardy with the seizure of phones as well as the reported cooperation of Ken Klukowski … Clark would be the most significant wrongdoer here, and so it seems likely that efforts to flip other witnesses would focus on him.”
If Clark is charged with a crime, McQuade added, “he might find it appealing to cooperate. Reports indicate that he met alone with Trump to discuss efforts to undermine election results. He could potentially be a valuable witness. This up-the-chain approach is the kind of strategy prosecutors use in organized crime cases.”
McQuade noted in particular that “Clark may be helpful to investigating the fake electors scheme in light of his draft letter to state legislatures suggesting they convene to appoint alternate slates of electors.”
The letter that Clark wanted to send to top Georgia legislators and the governor, which Klukowski helped draft, was cited at a hearing of the House January 6 panel in late June, by the vice-chair, Liz Cheney.
The letter stated falsely that “the Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States” and that the DoJ had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states including the state of Georgia”.
Former attorney general William Barr, and Rosen, who succeeded Barr in December 2020 as acting attorney general, had rejected claims by Trump and his allies of significant voting fraud in 2020.
However, former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue told the House January 6 panel that Clark pursued his own investigations and that, despite failing to find evidence of widespread fraud, Clark pressed ahead with drafting a baseless letter which both Donoghue and Rosen had flatly rejected signing and sending.
Donoghue testified he repeatedly told Clark that his actions boiled down to using the DoJ to meddle in the presidential election. Donoghue recalled that Clark responded, “I think a lot of people meddled in this election.”
Donoghue also told the House panel in a deposition that Cipollone had warned Trump that the draft letter falsely stating that DoJ had significant concerns about fraud was like a “murder-suicide pact” which would “damage everyone who touches it” if it were sent to Georgia officials.
Clark’s draft letter was rife with false statements about the election and his actions at DoJ to help Trump prompted the DC bar to file ethics charges against him alleging that his draft letter to Georgia officials represented dishonest conduct and breached legal ethics.
Rachel Semmel, a spokesman for Center for Renewing America, where Jeff Clark is the director of litigation, blasted the DoJ inquiries involving Clark and others. “Biden’s DoJ has made its focus attacking Americans, including attacking the legal qualifications of one of the only top lawyers at the DoJ who had the interests of the American people at heart.”
Former DoJ prosecutors say Klukowski’s cooperation in conjunction with evidence that prosecutors seem to have obtained about Clark’s role pushing Trump’s false election claims at DoJ, could be useful.
“If Klukowski can help deliver the goods on Clark, you may be on your way to Perry and Meadows who promoted Clark to Trump, possibly to Giuliani and Eastman, and ultimately Trump,” said former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut.
Likewise, McQuade sees potential bonuses for prosecutors as they investigate Clark and the fake electors schemes.
“Working up the chain, prosecutors could potentially flip Clark and Perry to get to Meadows, and Meadows to get to Trump,” McQuade said, “Each link in the chain would seem to have information that could be useful to prosecuting the next link up.”
