once trump lost the election, jeffrey clark became one of the leading voices, if not the leading voice pushing the justice department to play its role in trump s attempts to overturn the election. clark even reportedly plotted directly with trump to oust the acting attorney general, that was jeffrey rosen at the time, and take thiz job. the senate judiciary committee detailed some of clark s actions in the bomb shell report. he met with trump personally and urged the department of justice leadership to intervene in the georgia election. he drafted a kind of template later, a later for the acting attorney general, jeffrey rosen, to send to georgia titled georgia proof of concept basically telling them, look the doj is investigating voter fraud, maybe you should hold off on signing the electors. this was basically the doj using the power of the department of
court. and barbara this is where it strikes me that pressure, max mallism, maintaining it, pushing ahead, doing what you need to do, if you believe the folks on the committee are investigating the worst act on the capitol since 1812, the most egregious violation of democratic transfer of power since fort sumpter you have to use the means at your disposal to get the testimony you need. that s right. and congress has three methods of compelling testimony, inherent power, calling on the sergeant of arms, the one that william barr joked with nancy pelosi about, where are your handcuffs, that s not going to happen. and there has been talk of criminal contempt, charging with a crime and getting the justice department to do that, which is a possibility, but i think what you really want is the testimony and the most effective way to get that, i think, is through a civil suit, as harry says, acting the court to act with urgency. the penalty is he could be
justice of the united states government to intervene in the states and give them cover to overturn the election and send trump electors to washington. by early january, clark s pressure had turned into this crazy outright threat, his own kind of coup within a coup within the department of justice. according to the judiciary report, clark eventually informed acting attorney general rosen, again, this is his boss, that trump had offered to install him in rosen s place, and told rosen he would turn down trump s offer if rosen would agree to sign that proof of concept letter. clark has denied he plotted to overthrow rosen but according to the report, trump and clark only backed off. there were a number of meeting, a three-hour meeting at one point after several senior justice department leaders banned together and said we will resign in protest if crow do this, and the fallout will overshadow what you re trying to do. in fact, former acting attorney general jeffrey rosen whose role
justice department through a historically chaotic moment. i know based on conversations with folks throughout the day that one of the key focuses now for the january 6th select committee, one thing that they really pressed rosen on when he was testifying was clark s role. lots of questions about who clark was working with, whether he was working with people in the justice department as well as who he was working with outside the justice department. questions about the way clark was connected to strategies to try to get the supreme court to step in and overturn the election, as well, of course, as lots of questions regarding this effort to tell the state legislators falsely that the fbi had found meaningful evidence of voter fraud so the state legislators would try to step in. clark is the key next figure for the select committee to talk to. what s interesting about him is that several months ago, trump actually green lit clark s testimony to congress. he wrote a letter a couple of
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