Senior Justice and White House officials eviscerated Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark during a high-risk Oval Office meeting in early January 2021, where then-President Donald Trump he considered installing Clark as Attorney General so that he could use the powers of the Justice Department to overturn him. the 2020 elections.
“I said that Jeff Clark is not even competent to practice as an attorney general. He has never been a criminal lawyer. He has never done a criminal investigation in his life. He has never been before a grand jury, let alone d ‘a trial jury,’ Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue said in a video clip that was played Thursday, recalling what he said to Trump during the critical meeting of the Oval Office.
Donoghue said he told Clark, “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you come back to your office and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.”
Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann said Clark was “stuck in the head” repeatedly during the meeting. He said he explicitly told Clark he was breaking the law, according to his videotaped statement with the committee, a clip of which was played Thursday.
“F * a hole, congratulations, you just admitted that your first step or act you would do as Attorney General would be to commit a crime,” Herschmann said.
Herschmann later stated that he thought Clark’s plan was “crazy” and told the panel that he told Clark, “The best I can say is that all you know about environmental and electoral challenges, everyone two start with E. And depending on your answers. tonight, I’m not even sure you know. ”
According to Donoghue, then-White House Councilor Pat Cipollone said during the meeting that Clark’s plan to send letters to battlefield states, encouraging them to interfere with election results, was a “pact. of murder-suicide “.
During the Oval Office meeting, these officials struck down Clark’s ideas, though he kept trying to explain to Trump that he would discover widespread fraud if he was put in charge of the Justice Department. These officials successfully persuaded Trump to withdraw from the plan to lay off then-Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and promote Clark.