Lawyers panic after under-oath statement by ex-Trump DOJ official

Jeffrey Clark — a senior official at former President Donald Trump's Department of Justice — may have committed a major verbal error while testifying under oath at his disbarment hearing.

The Associated Press reported that Clark, who was acting head of the DOJ's civil division in the waning days of the Trump administration, reportedly had inappropriate and unsanctioned contact with Trump behind the backs of his superiors.

According to the AP, Clark maintained that there was rampant and widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election and urged the DOJ to take action to intervene in various battleground states that Trump lost — like Georgia, where Clark is a co-defendant in the Fulton County RICO case — to void President Joe Biden's victory.

Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, made it clear to Clark that while there may have been a few isolated incidents of fraud scattered across various states, it wasn't nearly enough to make a difference in who won the election.

They also learned that Clark had direct contact with Trump, which was a violation of DOJ policy as to who had contact with the White House. Even though Rosen and Donoghue told Clark to cease his contact with Trump, Clark continued to communicate with him in direct violation of DOJ rules.

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“My first reaction was, and I said it out loud: ‘You violated the White House contacts policy,’” Donoghue testified during Wednesday's hearing. “I was taken aback... I said, ‘Do not violate it again.’”

During Clark's disbarment proceedings in Washington, DC this week, the lead investigator questioned him under oath about his time at the DOJ in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

While Clark spoke generally about his legal background and experience, he invoked a number of privileges to get around answering most questions. But when Clark invoked attorney-client privilege, he may have gotten himself in even more trouble.

"Mr. Clark, you asserted a number of times attorney-client privilege," DC bar committeewoman Patricia Matthews asked. "For whom were you the attorney?"

Clark then responded that his client was "President Trump, the head of the executive branch, the sole head, the unitary head of Article Two, the executive branch of the United States government."

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This prompted Clark's lawyers to interject and urge their client to plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid incriminating himself.

"I would respectfully request my client to invoke questions about the basis for attorney-client privilege because those answers would be intimidating to them as well,” Clark's attorney, Harry MacDougald, said. "So respectfully, I would ask him to invoke [the Fifth Amendment]."

Clark's disbarment proceedings will continue on Thursday, with a three-person committee expected to issue its recommendation on whether Clark can keep his law license to a professional responsibility board after proceedings conclude.

Meanwhile, at his own disbarment hearing in California, a committee recommended that former Trump attorney John Eastman's law license be revoked in relation to his attempts to help Trump overturn the election. Like Clark, Eastman is also under felony indictment in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' RICO case.