Three days before Congress was slated to certify the 2020 presidential election, a little-known Justice Department official named Jeffrey Clark rushed to meet President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss a last-ditch attempt to reverse the results.
Clark, an environmental lawyer by trade, had outlined a plan in a letter he wanted to send to the leaders of key states Joe Biden won. It said that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the vote and that the states should consider sending “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump” for Congress to approve.
In fact, Clark’s bosses had warned there was not evidence to overturn the election and had rejected his letter days earlier. Now they learned
Clark was about to meet with Trump. Acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen tracked down his deputy, Richard Donoghue, who had been walking on the Mall in muddy jeans and an Army T-shirt. There was no time to change. They raced to the Oval Office.
As Rosen and Donoghue listened, Clark told Trump that he would send the letter if the president named him attorney general.
“History is calling,” Clark told the president, according to a deposition from Donoghue excerpted in a recent court filing. “This is our opportunity. We can get this done.”
. . . .
After the New York Times
reported in January 2021 about Clark’s actions, he said he engaged in a “candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president,” denied that he had a plan to oust Rosen, and criticized others in the meeting for talking publicly and “distorting” the discussion.
Now, however, key witnesses have provided Congress with a fuller account of Clark’s actions, including new details about the confrontation that took place in the Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting, which lasted nearly three hours.
. . . .
The evidence, which fills in crucial details about Clark’s efforts, includes an email showing he was sent a draft of a letter outlining a plan to try to overturn the election by a just-arrived Justice Department official who had once written a book claiming President Barack Obama planned to “subvert the Constitution.”
But larger mysteries could still be solved at an upcoming Jan. 6 committee hearing slated to examine Clark’s actions, including the crucial question of whether Clark and his allies were acting on their own initiative — or whether they were one piece of a larger, well-planned effort to keep Trump in power. That question gets to the heart of the committee’s professed mission:
proving there was a “coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who participated in the Judiciary Committee’s investigation, said investigators should key in on whether Clark was working on behalf of others not yet identified.
“It certainly could be a symptom of a much larger and more coherent plan than has currently been disclosed,” Whitehouse said. Clark “does not appear to have elections expertise or experience, which raises the question, did he really sit down at his computer and type it out or does somebody produce it for him?”