The week
Colleagues shocked that a ‘nerdy’ Justice Department official joined the effort to topple Trump’s election
Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and other senior Justice Department officials spent New Year’s Eve berating Jeffrey Clark, the interim head of the DOJ civil division, for repeatedly pressuring them to help former President Donald Trump to reverse his clear electoral loss and secretly meet Trump, The New York Times reports, citing six people with knowledge of the meeting. Rosen thought the matter was resolved that night, reports the Times, but Clark continued to secretly plan with Trump for an intervention in Georgia, including a plot in which Trump would fire Rosen and put Clark in his place. Clark said the Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post report on his role in an effort to replace Rosen and meddle in Georgia to undo Trump’s loss is inaccurate, and he says his discussions with Trump are protected. for “legal privileges”. Only the intervention of Justice Department officials and Trump’s attorney in the White House, Pat Cipollone, plus the threat of mass resignation, prevented Trump from firing Rosen and elevating Clark, the three newspapers report. Even before “Clark’s machinations surfaced” in the new year, it was clear from “his willingness to accept conspiracy theories about voting booth hacking and electoral fraud” that Clark “was not the established lawyer they thought whatever it was, “reports the Times. “Some senior department leaders considered him to be quiet, hardworking and detail-oriented. Others said they knew nothing about him, so low was his profile. He did not reach either his fans in the department or his detractors as being part of the Trumpist.” Clark’s critics, reports the Times, described him as “nerdy” and “thoughtful,” a Republican lawyer and a member of the Federalist Society with the usual skeptical view of regulations, not an operator. Clark, 53, is now “notorious” and unlikely to be hired back at the Kirkland & Ellis law firm, where he spent his career outside of his Trump and George W. Bush seasons, the Times reports. Read more about Clark – a former student at Harvard, Georgetown Law and the Biden School of Public Policy at the University of Delaware – in The New York Times. More stories from theweek.com 5 sarcastically funny caricatures about Biden’s COVID-19 push ‘No way’ McConnell had a post-Trump epiphany ‘, says political scientist Biden foolishly downgrading America’s response to COVID