Jeffrey Clark Should Get 2-Year Suspension, DC Ethics Board Says

Trump administration Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark should receive a two-year suspension for attempting dishonesty over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a DC Board on Professional Responsibility panel recommended Thursday.

“Disciplinary Counsel has proven by clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Clark attempted dishonesty and did so with truly extraordinary recklessness,” the panel said.

The recommendation from a board hearing committee is in stark contrast to that of DC Disciplinary Counsel Phil Fox, who on April 29 said that disbarment is “the only possible sanction” for Clark.

Clark, a former US assistant attorney general, in late 2020 tried to get his Justice Department superiors to send a letter to Georgia state officials improperly questioning the election outcome, three lawyers for the bar, led by Fox, wrote. Clark engaged in a “dishonest attempt to create national chaos on the verge of January 6,” they wrote.

Fox didn’t prove “by clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Clark was as culpable” as Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani or John Eastman, but he was culpable, the committee said in its 213-page, Aug. 1 report.

“He had no experience with criminal investigations and in his position as Acting Assistant Attorney General had no responsibility for and no involvement in any investigations relating to election matters,” said the report.

“At the eleventh hour of the Trump Administration, he sought to take over responsibility for investigations into election matters, and relying on what was, at best, a fraction of the information any reasonable attorney would expect to act on, to insist on sending a letter—with significant false and misleading statements—to officials in the State of Georgia, urging extraordinary action to intervene in the electoral process,” the report said.

Yet, “The limitation in what was charged and proven warrants a less severe sanction than the Board found appropriate” in the sanctions case targeting Giuliani, the report said.

The committee chastised Fox for engaging in “emotionally overheated rhetoric,” when he called Clark’s conduct “‘the second greatest internal threat’ to democracy, behind only the Civil War.’”

The hearing committee includes chair Merril Hirsh, Patricia Mathews, and Rebecca C. Smith.

Fox declined a request to comment.

In a written statement, Clark’s legal team said that today’s report “against our client Jeff Clark is unlawful on many grounds and wrongly dives into confidential deliberations shielded by both presidential immunity and executive privilege—matters the Committee’s three volunteers have no power to shred.”

Clark’s legal team said they would pursue multiple appeals.

Both sides have the opportunity to take exceptions to the hearing committee’s recommendations, including to the sanction, to the full board. Then, the case is likely to land before the DC Court of Appeals.

Caldwell, Carlson, Elliott & DeLoach LLP and Burnham & Gorokhov PLLC represent Clark. The DC Office of Disciplinary Counsel is represented by Phil Fox and Jack Metzler with the DC Court of Appeals.

The case is In re: Jeffrey Clark, D.C. Cir., No. 23-07073, Opinion 8/1/24