The District of Columbia Board on Skilled Accountability lately dropped a 111-page tome recommending that Jeffrey Clark be disbarred for his actions whereas on the Division of Justice throughout President Donald Trump’s first time period. In a growth that ought to hopefully trigger consternation for present DOJ attorneys, Clark is being disciplined for his actions undertaken in his official position on the DOJ.
With all of the chaos of Trump’s present occupation of the White Home, Clark might have slipped your thoughts. Nonetheless, Clark was no slouch within the Huge Lie period. For many of Trump’s first time period, Clark was the assistant legal professional normal for the Surroundings and Pure Assets Division. He turned the appearing head of the Civil Division within the fall of 2020 and gave Trump a serving to hand in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
He’s the one who tried to get the DOJ to challenge a letter he wrote, saying the division was conscious of election fraud in a number of states, together with Georgia. This resulted in Clark having to look earlier than the Jan. 6 committee, the place he pleaded the Fifth Modification, and being criminally charged in Georgia state courtroom together with Trump and a dozen-plus others. It additionally resulted within the Washington, D.C., bar opening disciplinary proceedings towards Clark, resulting in Thursday’s suggestion that he be disbarred.
Emil Bove, who has a lifetime seat on the federal bench.
It could be as a result of Clark was already dealing with a bar investigation that he wasn’t rewarded with a high-level DOJ job like Trump’s former private prison protection attorneys. Too unhealthy, since that seems to be one pathway to a lifetime seat on the federal bench, a minimum of for Emil Bove. He does get to be the appearing administrator for the Workplace of Data and Regulatory Affairs inside the Workplace of Administration and Price range, the place it presumably doesn’t matter if he’s allowed to follow regulation.
Irrespective of how loyal Clark is to Trump, irrespective of how a lot energy Trump amasses, Trump can’t power the D.C. bar to let Clark preserve his license. It’s the identical factor for John Eastman, one of many inventors of the faux elector scheme, who’s dealing with disbarment in California.
Admission to the bar is regulated on the state degree, and the federal authorities has no position in licensing attorneys. Nonetheless, DOJ attorneys have to keep up an lively bar membership in a state, territory, or the District of Columbia.
Legal professional John Eastman, the architect of a authorized technique geared toward preserving former President Donald Trump in energy.
Today, what Clark is getting sanctioned for appears nearly quaint. Whereas the D.C. bar acknowledged that Clark might have had “sincere personal concerns” in regards to the 2020 election, he nonetheless tried to make deliberately false statements by urging the Justice Division to challenge his Huge Lie letter, as he knew that the Division had not recognized any election fraud points in Georgia or different states.
For the D.C. bar, that is each a slam dunk and a necessity: Clark “was prepared to cause the Justice Department to tell a lie about the status of its investigation of an important national issue (the integrity of the 2020 presidential election). Lawyers cannot advocate for any outcome based on false statements, and they certainly cannot urge others to do so. Respondent persistently and energetically sought to do just that on an important national issue. He should be disbarred as a consequence and to send a message to the rest of the Bar and to the public that this behavior will not be tolerated.”
The chance that DOJ attorneys may face legal professional self-discipline for false statements about an essential nationwide challenge made in the middle of their employment ought to strike the present denizens of that division as an existential risk, one which Trump can’t make go away. That didn’t cease Clark from attempting, nevertheless, alleging that D.C.’s legal professional self-discipline scheme is unconstitutional and that Trump’s immunity from prosecution by some means additionally lined him. For sure, the D.C. Bar didn’t appear inclined to use Trump’s presidential immunity to Clark.
Clark additionally tried a Trumpy little separation of powers gambit, saying that the D.C. authorities had no proper to be “second-guessing confidential inside deliberations on the highest degree of the Govt Department, together with immediately with the President himself within the Oval Workplace, concerning the best way to perform the President’s core authorities underneath Article II.”
Because the D.C. Board’s suggestion explains, although, nothing about disciplining Clark is about second-guessing any government department selections. It’s about whether or not Clark violated the D.C. Guidelines of Skilled Conduct, which apply to each lawyer admitted to the D.C. bar.
“Presidential immunity” by Clay Bennett
What must be so maddening for Clark is that this form of distraction and obfuscation works completely effectively for Trump, who continues to skirt any penalties in any way and who appears to have the ability to simply yell “ARTICLE II” on the Supreme Court docket to get his approach. However for the reason that D.C. courts aren’t a part of the federal judiciary, Clark is out of luck there.
Clark additionally tried to get the D.C. bar to let him flip every little thing right into a Trumpian sideshow about election fraud versus Clark’s conduct. He requested that the disciplinary board reopen the file to allow discovery about whether or not “the lawfare-style weaponization of presidency towards Mr. Clark by the Biden FBI, the January 6 Choose Committee, the Jack Smith investigation, and ODC [the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel] was coordinated.” He additionally needed to subpoena an FBI investigative database.
You’ll be able to nearly hear the exasperation of the D.C. panel leaping off the web page: “Whether the FBI should have investigated President Trump regarding the alternate slates of electors has nothing whatever to do with any of the facts relevant to Disciplinary Counsel’s charges.”
Irrespective of how Clark clothes it up, legal professionals get in bother for violating their jurisdiction’s guidelines {of professional} conduct. Clark was dinged with violations of Rule 8.4 of the D.C. Guidelines of Skilled Conduct. Legal professionals are prohibited from partaking in “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.”
What’s occurring to Clark ought to function a cautionary story: being on the DOJ doesn’t assure safety from disciplinary motion. Slightly, the truth that Clark was knowledgeable by the DOJ staff really accountable for such issues that the DOJ had not uncovered any election fraud meant that persevering with to get a letter out the door saying the alternative was, effectively, a lie.
That’s a violation of an legal professional’s moral duties, irrespective of how a lot Clark needs there to be some particular carveout for attorneys who’re mendacity on behalf of Trump. Present DOJ attorneys may want to preserve that in thoughts as they’re dragooned into harassing “investigations” manufactured by present Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon based mostly on no matter she sees on X when she wakes up. Trump might need a magic protect, however nobody else does.
